N .B.· An extensive bibliography of writings by and about Cascoriad.is in a

dozen languages can be found at the Corndiw Cascoriadis/Agora Inter-national Website, http://aleph.lib.ohio-sracc.edu/bcasc/castoriadis. Foreword Castoriadis and th, Statesman

PIERRE V!DAL-NAQUET

This small book has a history that makes a lovely story. h started out as a Ca.noriadis seminar on one of Plato's most difficult dialogues, the Staks- m4n, recorded on audiotape week after week between February 19 and April 30, 1986, before an audience of studencs from the t.cole des Hautes ~tudcs en Sciences Sodales. A first raw draft of the transcription was made by Pase.a.I Vernay, with the collaboration of three of his friends, in 1991, and submitted to Cor- nelius, whom we called Corneille. He was at once surprised ("I didn't know that I had written a nc:w book"), delighted, and severe, as he was to- ward himself. Since that time, the text has been reworked, filled in, and clarified on a few poincs of detail. Thw was born, while Corneille was still alive, a ream whose collaboration continues afccr his death and chat pro- poses to publish in their entirety, and with the requisite rigor, chc semi- nars led by Cornelius Cascoriad.is. An encyclopedic task if there ever was one. Vernay tells us the basics in his lntroduction. Of his work, I can say what he could not say: how remarkable it is, and in what way it is so. Plato is an author who condemned writing, a perverse gift of the Egyptian god Thoth, in the Phaedrw and also, as a matter of faa, in the Sl4tm714n. The written law c.annot hold its own vis-a-vis science as embodied in che philosopher in power. The poets arc co be chased from the city of the Rrpublii:; and writing is only a deutrros plow, a second best, a lesser ~ii in relation to liv- ing speech and memory. Between impossible speech and theoretical writ- ing, Plato chose a sublime compromise: the dialogue. The dialogue is to>,. speech what myth is to truch. The transcription of Castoriadis's seminar we owe to Vernay is the result of a similar compromise; it is certainlyxiv Foreword

closer co the spoken word than the Platonic dialogue is, but it is pur-posely situated between the oral and the written. There have been, forcertain famous seminars, transcribers who, while claiming to be perfectlyfaithful, have sown confusion and sometimes ended up looking ridicu-lous. Such is not the case with the seminar on the Statesman. When I presented Cornelius Castoriadis's candidacy at the &ole desHautes f.tudes en Sciences Sociales twenty years ago, I recalled a dialoguerhac had taken place at Perney apropos of Voltaire. "It's only in Romanlaw that I find him a bit weak," said a famous professor ... of Romanlaw. "And as for me," replied d'Alembert, .. that's my opinion, too, con-cerning mathematics." I was trying co explain to my colleagues that, as aspecia1ist in ancient Greek culture, I did not find Castoriadis at all "a bitweak" in this sector and that, quite the contrary, I had much to learnfrom him. And I have indeed learned much from him. It happens that itwas apropos of Athenian democracy that, during the winter of 1963-64, I had my first dia1ogue with Castoriadis. Since the time of another winrer, that of 1956-57, I had been acquainted with Sodalimu ou Barbarit, the review he ran with Claude Lefort, and by the end of 1958, I had made afirst fleeting contact with the group, but I knew the man only very littleand very superficially. With Lefort and a few ochers, Corneille panicipared in a circle of thinkers, with Saint-Just chosen as "patron saint. " 1 Fran~ois Ch.itcler,Jean-Pierre Vernant, and myself were asked co cake up the cause of Greekdemocracy and present it before chis group. In 1961, Vernam had pub-lished le, OrigintJ d, la prml< gr,cqu, (Th< Origins ofGrt<k Thought), inwhich he explained that Greek thought was the daughter of the city andwas modeled upon the political sphere {/,t politiqw]. 2 Chitder had writ-ten La NaiHana de /'hiJtoir~ (The Birch of History), a book in which heshowed that history, coo-as a discipline founded by Hecaraew,Herodotw, and Thucydides-was closely connected with the civic struc-ture. 1 For my part, with Pierre UvCque, I had just finished Clisthffltl'Athlnien (Ckisthents the Athenittn), a book on Cleisthenes, thefounder-after Solon, bur in a more radical way than Solon--of rheAthenian democracy." I was young a.nd, to tell the truth, a bit full of myself, proud beyondreason of my new knowledge. How had democracy been born~ At Chios,perhaps-although few srill believe that-rhen at Athens. I saw ic as hav-ing been instituted around two experiences-tyranny, which was ere.a.rive Fomuord xv

of forms of equality, and coloniution, a source of polfrical invcntionr-

and on • foundation: slavery. I rapidly came to understand rhar I had be- fore me not some amatcun but real experts, and that Castoriadis, in par- ticular, was intensely familiar with all the major texts, those of the philosophers, the historians, and the tragedians. A, for democracy, far from being merely .. formal• (as imbeciles were saying), it was the very ex- ample, at Athens, of the self-institution of society. I would nor necessarily countersign everything Corneille wrote about ancient Greece. If it were otherwise, what purpose would a dialogue with someone's oeuvre serve? Nevertheless, we arc rallcing about a great oeuvre and a robust way of thinking. The reader has in his hands one of the finest texts this incredibly fertile mind produced. A dialogue of Plato's, the Suus,rwn, a dialogue with Plato, and, as Vcrnay says, "a trcmcndow fragment of philosophical agora, in which Plato and Cutoriadis confronc each oth<"r at their most resourceful, with an issue at stake: democracy."

There arc many ways of studying Plato. Castoriad.is proceeds, accord-

ing to an image from the Phudnu, like a good butcher: he brings out what he ca11s the Suuemutn's "quirky structure," wirh its three digressions, its eight incidental points, and ics two definitions, "neither of which is the good one from Plaro's point of view." Here, Castoriadis's work could be contrasted with chat of another cxcgcte who spent a great deal of time onY Plato: Leo Strauss. Like Castoriadis, Strauss foUowed the ccxt quite doscly-ro the point of modeling himself upon it. But the result in Strauss's case is a constant jwcincation of the most minor details of the ar- gument. Castoriadis, on the contrary, is very panicular about differing with the text, showing that what is, in appearance, secondary is in reality essential-this is che case, for example, with the myth of the reign of Cronu.s--and that the denunciation of the Sophiscs accommodates itself quite well ro the use of sophistical procedures. He shows perfectly, coo, how, with the .. resignation.. Ulrich von Wilamowin-Mocllendorff spoke of, the SIA"""4n takes us into the heart of what is the mark par excellence of tbe late Plato: blending, acceptance of the mixed, even of the m,tax,;, of the intermcdiace; democracy is the worse of the regimes governed by laws; it is the least bad of anomic regimes. When I was a student, a book by Kul Popper, Th, Open Society and Its Enmun, sec out to anack the "spell" of Plaro head-on.' He made of Platoxvi Fortwor~·

a "reactionary" thinker who hurled such slogans as "Back to the tribal

patriarchy." In that form, the attack completely missed its target. Platowas not reactionary i.11 the sense that, for example, Charles Maurras was; 6he did not dream of an impossible regression. A study of the iAwsdcmonsrrates his perfect knowledge of the legal and political mechanismsof fourth-century Athens, and it was ro a foreigner from Athens that heentrusted the task of sketching out, on Crete, the very detailed scheme fora new city, "second in unity" in relation to the city of the &public. le re-mains the case, however, chat while Plato knew the world surroundinghim and chc one that came before him, he hated that world. And hishauc-d did not apply only to the democracy whose contemporary hewas-which when he died in 348 8.C.E. was already confronced wichPhilip of Macedon-hue in the 6rst place to the insticucing democracy,char of Pericles, whom he accacked direcdy or indirectly in the Gorgias,caricaturing him under the name of Calliclcs. With the sole exception of the l.Aws, chere is no dialogue of Plato's chatis not clearly situated before che death of Socrates or at the moment of thelatter's death, in 399. All Plato's characters are therefore men of the fifthcencury, even chough Plato takes all possible and imaginable liberties wichthe chronology. The example of che Mtnamus, that cruel pastiche of Per-icles' Funeral Oration in Thucydides-a pastiche put in the mouth of As-pasia, a woman, a courtesan, and, what is more, Pericles' official mis-tress-shows chat Plato knows perfectly well where to strike: not at the"demagogues" of che "decadent" period but at the very hean of the citychat claimed co be the educator of Greece. 7 From irs 6.rst lines, the Statllmiln tells us that to treat the sophist, thestatesman, and the philosopher as if they were "of equal value" is co makean "outrageous remark." Ir is the royal man, who alone is ulcimately wor-thy of governing the city, rhac the Stranger from Elca comes to seek atAthens, not the citizen capable-as demonstrated by the myth in the f+o.tagoras, which undoubtedly reflects the great Sophist's view that ~cryhuman heing has at his disposal a modicum of political know-how-ofexpressing an opinion on the great problems with which the city is con-fronted, if not on technical questions. Perversely, Plato plays upon theambiguity of techni, as if statesmanship [la politUj1u] were some kind oftechnical knowledge. But the whole question is precisely whether theking can rule the city without destroying its foundations. The "king" in Greece, as Castoriadis rightly remarks, was a marginal6.gure. Ac Athens, he wa.s an archon, an annual magistrate, chosen by lot. Fomuord xvii

Hi.s duties were pwdy rcligiow. Hi.s wife, the "queen," wed Dionysw. AtSparta, the two "kings" were an archaeological curiosity. Their duties werebasically military. The greatest of the Spanan generals during rhe Pelo-poonc:sian War, Lysander, belonged to a royal line, but he was never"king." The Athenians can be heard to say without any complex, via a charac-ter from Aristophanes' Wasps (around 422 a.c.E.), that their power "yieldsto no kingship" (line 149), and before that, via Pericles and via Cleon,that they cx.crcisc something like a ..tyranny"' over rhe allied cities-thatis to say, that they are to Mytilene and to Samos whac Oedipw is in ap-pearance to Thebc:s-ruler not by right of birth but by the fortune (rue/,,)of history. h for the real kings, they were located on the outer edges ofthe Greek world: in Epirw, on Cyprw, and especially in Macedonia. It remains the case that, beside the King par excellence, who reignedover the Persian empire, the royal personage w;as an imponant and evencapital figure in fourrh-centuty Greek political thought. Plato was notalone in this. Even though it pwports to be the story of rhe education ofthe founder of the Achaemenid dynasty, Xmophon's Cyropa,d;a, which isnearly contemporary with Plato's Rrp"l,I~. is a treatise on how Greekcities can make good we of the providential man. The same goes for Isocratcs' EVAtoras, a eulogy for a Cypriot king. Plaro, Xenophon, andlsocrates herald a time that became one of kings, after Philip and <Spe-cially Alexander, who corresponds rather well to the panbasikw evokedby Aristotle in the third book of hi.s Poutics-, indeed, Ari.stode was the ed-ucator of Alaander after having been Plato's disciple. X.nophon, Plato, and lsocratcs became the prophets of the Hdlenis,icworld. Needless to say, the city did nor disappear. le was Still an c:sscntialfram~ork for life in the age of che first Roman emperors, but in theMcditc-rrancan world and even in the Greek world, ic ceased to be a pre-ponderant factor. The greatest town of the Hellenistic world, Alexandria,which was "near Egypt" and not ·in" Egypt, was in fact a tow11 more thana cicy. The Greeks there were citizens, but they had no pan in the gov-ernment of their town. It was in vain that Clcomencs, a revolutionaryking cxikd from Sparta, attempted at the end of the third centuty, underPtolemy IV, to incite them to frcc-dom. Alexandria was not an au-tonomous decision-making center. It is in this sense that it can be said ofP~w. as Casroriadi.s docs, chat he played a "considerable role in ... rbedc:srruaion of the Greek world." One can go even further than this andsta.te rhac in the Luer Roman F.mpirt', ~tarting with Diocletian, we findxviii Foreword

philosopher-kings who claimed to govern according to Placo's principles.

Diocletian himself tacitly did so in an edict (from 301) that set a maxi-mum price for all merchandise, rhe preamble of which is nourished byPlaro's philosophy.

For Castoriadis, philosopher and theorc:rician of the political sphere,

society has to tend toward a mode: of explicit sdf-creation, a self-creationincc:ssancly rc:nc:wc:d by what he: calls-and this is the tide of his most fa-mous book-"thc: imaginary instimtion of society." For Plato--crc:acor,after rhe Milc:sians and chc Elc:atics, of philosophy-it is the: "royal race"alone that can be: defined as "self-directive" (auupitalttilti [Statesman:z.6oc:}). For Castoriadis, the Athenians' immortal contribution to politi-cal thought is their integration of historicity. That is how the: Corinthiansdepict chem to the Spartans in book I (68-71) ofThucydides; 9 for Plato,the statesman's whole: effort is aimed at blocking the: historical process. As for the: imaginary, Plato docs in fact make abundanc we: of it-whether it is a matter of a mere: image (like che abundanc comparisonsborrowed from the: vocabulary of the variow trades), of a paradigm (likethat of weaving), 10 or of myths (like the one that plays a central role in theStawman, which Cascoriadis compc:tencly analyzes). Bue neither themyth nor the image nor the paradigm gives us access to the "incorporeal realities that are the mon beautiful and the greatest." For chcsc "most pre-cious" realities there are, as Pla{O cells us expressly, no "images created inorder co give men a clear intuition of mern" (Statesman 285e---286a). It remains the case:, however, that Plato plays, with great panache, uponthe very thing he denounces! He uses the paradigm of weaving, for ex·ample, in order to make of the king a weaver who weds courage and gen-tleness the way his craftsman model unites the warp and the woof in or-der ro manufacture a fabric. The: paradigm of weaving is far from takenar random. Castoriadis sensed this very well, and works wrinen subse-quent to his seminar have established this in the greatest detail: weavingfurnishes Greek thought, boch mythical and political, with one of irsmost precious tools of analysis. 11 Cornelius Castoriad.is did indeed come to Paris, coming from Athens,as rhe Stranger came from Elea (Vdia), in Magna Graecia, to Athens inorder co be there a "teacher of truth," teacher of a truth who wanted notto ?oliffe but to promote: freedom. Introduction "Living Thought at Work"

PASCAL VERNAY

It was during the winter of 1992. that Corncliw Casroriadis read thepresent transcription of these seven seminars hdd at the &olc des Hauccs~tudes en Sciences Socialcs (EHESS) in 1986. His notes, corrections, andadditions have, of course, been integrated into the text you arc about toread. The judgment he gave was a bit contra.diaory. Amwcd, at first: "Ididn't know I had written a new book"; then gcncrow: it's ..an excellentjob"; finally, reserved, bee.awe "some of the point.s aren't ripe enough" toenvisage publication. Yee here we have these scminan published, and,what is more, i.n an unauthorized form. Why, then, have we not respectedhis wish not to sec them in print? First of all, and this is the most circumstantial reason, because in early1991 Corneille was busy preparing che fourth and fifth volumes of che Carrefour, du i,J,yrind,, (Cro.ssroads in the Labyrinch) series and above allpreoccupied wich putting togcchcr [a planned multivolume work to beentitled] Lz Crlation hum4iru (Human Creation). 1 Planned, thought out,and daborated for almost twenty years, .. La Creation humaine" W3.S to befound-albeit in raw form-in the transcriptions of the more than 200seminars held at the EHESS since 1980. The rewriting of a history of phi·losophy commentary-co speak too quickly, and even chough chis com-mentary had ics place in the overall publication of his great work--d.idnot figure at that rime among his priorities: he wished to begin with"heavy" philosophy, ontology, therefore, and co get co Greece and to pol-itics only si.J: or seven volumes later. Alluding to the relative "greenness" ofthis work on Plato was therefore also Castoriadis's way of telling us: I'vegot someffiing else co do at the moment.xx b,troductlo ,-,

The second clement involved in weighing this macrcr relates to the

high degree of excellence Corneille required of himself and of what hesigned. This was not just about elegance, formal perfection-althoughrhc pertinence, the virulence, of certain condensed conclusive formulasgarner our support as much as the arguments preceding them do; and al-though, in addition, Castoriadis, who detested approximations and need-less repetitions, used footnotes to refer to already solidly establishedpoints, whence the extreme density of most of his writings. It was aboutcompletion: a text is finished when it can stand on its own, when its the-ses, arguments, and supports have been sufficiently tested beforehand,polished with criticism in order to resist attacks. From the standpoint ofsuch completion, of this capacity for sdf-defense, these seven seminarshave quite strong backing; it is not a mere textual commentary you areabout to read, but rather a cremendow fragment of philosophical agora,in which Plato and Castoriadis confront each ocher at their most re-sourceful, with an issue at stake: democracy. Finally, and this is precisdy what might have bothered Corneille, there is the insufficiently reworked oral nature of the presentation. Yet this is roday what for us makes this long commentary so preciow: our rediscov-ery of that ever so trenchant, convincing, energetic, provocative, drollvoice-in a word, a voice chat 6lls us with enchwiasm-which makes upa hie for chc pain we fed in having lost him. And it is also, for his wual readers, testimony to a hitheno unknown Casroriadis, who reflects whilehe is speaking, collccrs himsdf, corrects himself. and does not hesitate toharp on whar his listeners absolutely have to take in. And chen chere is the most precious thing of all: gening a fed for his thinking. which, at rheend of a seminar, tries to 6nd itsdf, gropes about a bit confusedly, andthen cakes on its full breadth, all its rectitude, at the beginning of the nextseminar. This living speech-preserved, rediscovered-has nevenhdess been re-worked. 2 The recordings of the seminars have, of course, served as the ba-sis. First, che most scrupulous, faithful, and exhaustive transcription pos-sible was made, an unpadcag«I transcription, it could be said. Then cheformal errors or fwnblcs of all kinds (grammatical, syntactical, etc.) wererectified, the citations corrected, but wichout harming the w.ay his speechunfolds. After chat, in a third stage, attempts were made-as discr«tly aspossible-to improve chc overall readability: rurning two sentences into ni

one, or vice versa, transforming some of the acunuscs into notes, settingback into their place within the ow,rall commcntaty some developmentsthat, u Castoriadis himself had pointed out, had been forgotten, and, 6-nally, indicating. surely in a bit too heavy-handed and fottnal a manner,the articulations of the argument, of the exposition, either because he hadneglected to insist upon them or because they had been drowned out, lostin the over.all exposition. As. for words and phrases in Greek, we have cho-sen to tnnslitcratc according to the system Castoriadis himsdf used: aLatin chasactct (or two) for a Greek letter, wing che wual accents to in-dicate the length of v..-ls (chw, I !Americanized in this translation to i'}for eta, 6 (Americanized to iii for omega, t for epsilon, etc.). Nonetheless,in the case of longer quotations integral to the play of the questions andanswers, we give the Gtcek text-that of Augwtc Di~ (Paris: Les BellesLcttrcs, 1960, 1975). A few rudimentary thematic points, it seems ro us, might be wcfulhere in order to place these seven seminars in the context of Casroriadis'ssixteen ynrs of teaching at the EHESS. Herc is a very rough summary.The years from 1980 to 1986 were basially devoted to Grcccc, to chc cre-ation of philosophy and democracy-with more precise and spcci6canalyses here and chctc of Anaximandcr, Heraclitw, che tragedians, Peri-cles' Funeral Oration, Plato's St,zfnmAn, and so on. Then, from 1987 un-til 1991, Castoriadis took up anew the great problems of philosophy, con-fronting his "parent ideas" [idlt, mms] with the analyses of the "fourgreats" from the histoty of philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hegel.Finally, the ycats 1993, 1994, and 1995 dealt almost cxclwivcly with thehuman psyche, swting from, with, and sometimes against Freud. To situate chis commentaty on the St,zfnmAn within his overall laborduring the 1985---416 school year, here, 6nally, is the summary Castoriadishimself wrote for EHESS's annual report, under me tide "Institution ofSociety and Historical Creation: Democracy and Philosophy in AncientGrcccc": The 198s-86 seminar endeavored ro bring out first the differences and oppo- sirions bmr,,ccn chc Grttk political imaginary and the modern political imag- inary.' As opposed 10 direct panicipation in power and sdf-govcmrncm in the democratic cities and to the absence there of Ule State, of •ideology, .. of an arnsociaJ basis for the instinnion, and of constitutional iUwions, there att in modem times rhe imaginary of ..rcprcscnration,• the omnipresence andxxii lntroductiv•!

the all·powcrfulness of a bureaucratic State dm lies beyond the bounds of the

political game, the cloaking of governmenta.l power as such, and "ideology." But on the ocher hand, lS opposed co the limicacions placed upon ancient po· litical activity, there is a lifting of the limits of modern political action: exten· sion of formal sovereignty co the whole of che population; universality, by righ1, of che political community (wherein, ic is true, che nation remains a lump undigested by politica.l philosophy); and a challenging. by right, of all institutions. Finally, as opposed to the ancient political ethos of brutal frank· ncss (no justification of slavery existed before Aristotle), there is the instituted duplicity of modern times (which originates in monotheism, on the one hand, and imperial Rome, on the ocher). In the background, there was, for the Greeks, being as chaosllt01mos and che accepu.nce of mortality; for che Moderns, the subject (God and his successive placeholders, culminating in the substantive individual) and the illusion of immortality. Plaro conscicuccs the point of passage between these two worlds. His unitary ontology and his idenci6cacion of being with the good, which are radically foreign to the Greek imaginary, later became central co modern thought and practice. Profound.Jy hating the democratic universe and its arborescenccs (wsophiscry," rhetoric, political activity, even poetry), he construccs--by strokes of historic.ti falsi6cacion, rhetoric, sophistry, chcacrical scenes, and demagogy-a false image ofic chat was lacer co h.ave weighty historic::al effects: when referring to Plato, one still talks about "Greek political thought," whereas he is the total negation cherco( He pulled off a great h.iscorical opcr· acion, transforming the de facto descrucrion of the democracy into a de jure downfall. Greek political thought is to be sought, rather. in democratic polit- ical creation, .;1.nd that creation ends basically in 40-4 (or 399). The very dif- ference bcrwcen Socrates and Plato symbolizes this: Socrates remained in the city, whereas Plato withdrew from it; Socrates was a soldier, gave sons to th( city, and served as a magistrate, wheras nothing of the k.ind is known about Pl.;1.m. Ac the same time, though, Plato created philosophy for a second time. He in· vented imaginary schemata of great potential; he was rhe 6m to articulate and to instrument his schemata in and through a tremendous deployment of enscmbliscic·idenciury means, the first to aim at and co achieve a system with pretensions co exhaustiveness, but also the first to be able to put his own re- sults back inco question. More than just philosophical reasoning, Plato ere· ated philosophical Rca.son-Lotos-and that is why, cvcn among his advcr· sarics, philosophy remains Platonic. The Statmnan was chosen as an object co be worked upon in derail: more chan just a difficult transition between the &public and the laws, it is also an /ntrot/,,a;on uiii

arn:mdy rich dialogu, in ia own right. But it is above all a dialogu, whose ap-paRnt and real quirks (!WO definitions, neither or which truly comes off, th ...major dign:s,ions, and eight less long dign:s,iom ot incidental poinu) make it,or all Plato's writing>--411d perhaps °""n or all philosophical writing-theone in which can best be xen living thought at work. On che Translation

Once again, the ma.in challenge of the present translation has been cotranslate Casroriad.is while endeavoring co be faithful to his own distinc-tive translations from ancient Greek. 1 As Castoriad.is himself noted in"The Disc.ovcry of the Imagination": "The translations of passages ... arcmy own. Ohcn they diverge considerably (and sometimes on 'dcmcmary'points of meaning) from existing translations. I have worried little aboutelegance" ( WIF, p. 116). In hi., Suu,muzn seminars, Castor~dis makes useof Auguste Dies's standard Guillaume Bud~ French uanslation. But he de-paned therefrom when he felt he himself could better translate Plato's textand elucidate its meaning. Translations of Plato differ rather substantially,if not wildly, within any one modem language, let alone between two ormore. There would have been no way of capturing the specificity of theterminology, phrasing, and Aavor of Casroriadis's renditions through di-rect use of existing English translations for the Stllta'1Uln. (The same goesfor other Platonic dialogues he quotes and funhcr ancient Greek authorshe cites, remarkably wdl. from memory.) I have therefore again opted rorender the distinctivcness of these French rranslacions, whether DiCs's,Castoriadis's own, or a combination thereof, dirccdy in English myself.This has often required consultation of the Greek original, Dies's French,and an English translation (Hamilton and Ca.irns's Plato: Th, Co/1,mdDiaiopn), and I have incorporated nuances of all three into the final Eng-lish version given here. The French original of these seven Ca.scoriadis seminars prepared byPascal Vcrnay and reviewed by the speaker himself offers a good runningguide to the general locations in the Sutmn4n where Castor~dis offersxxvi ·1.., the Tmnsl:tion

translations of dialogue, Standards for providing citations and references

arc considerably stricter in the English-speaking world. Included, there-fore, arc specific addiriorlal references in scrolled braces" I} "-also noting"cf." and a reference in such braces for quotations of nor fully certain ori-gin or for Castoriadis's more general paraphrases. These added referencesshould aid the reader who wishes to follow the commentary closely; anyerrors in them are my own. In a number of instances, Castoriadis quotes or makes passing mencionof other authors. In the past, I checked with Castoriadis directly con-cerning unreferenced quotations. Since I can no longer do this, I have now added some references myself, in consultation with the ream of French editors. In some cases, however, this was not possible.' As with his polyglot writings, Castoriadis's spoken seminars span sev- eral languages, as if "no one language, or even three or four, could bear the weight of his thought."J Interestingly, a significant number of English words steal inco Castoriadis's lectures. These include: "second best" to translate deuteroJ pious throughout, "bwybody" as the best uanslation ofpolupragmontin (2/r9), and numerous colloquialisms--''Tell that to the marines!" (2/J9), "jam session" (3/12), "They will laugh him down" (4'23)-as well as his paraphrase of President Reagan's "political maxim"(4/30). AJso wonhy of note arc a few neologisms in French, English, or bothlanguages. Comitant-Castoriadis's neologism for Aristotle's 1umbt-biko1-ha.<, again been translated as "comiranr. "4 Note here my own sub-sequent discovery chat "comitant" does indeed--or at least did--cxist inEnglish. le thus is not a neologism in our language. The Oxford Engli1hDictionary notes that this now "rare" term comes from comit4nt-m1, pastparticiple of comitari, "to accompany"-preciscly the sense Castoriadisintended when creating his French neologism! (A search of several Frenchdictionaries turned up no comparable existing, rare, or even obsoleteterm.) lnttrrogativitl appears to be another Casroriadis neologism, thisone improvised on the spot. I have created the English "equivalent," plac-ing interrogativity in quotation marks at its first appearance. There is aFrench word stmorialitl. It is of relatively recent origin-1970, accordingto the Grand Larousu dt '4 langru franraiu, where it is defined as "the setof functions of the scnsorial system, that is to say, of rhe-spc:c.ia.J.iud sen-soriaJ apparatwes, or organs of the senses, as they arc classlCally distin-guished." Lacking an English equivalent, I have used (coined?) 1nuorial- :avii

ity, it being a short stmch from thc: extant English adjective with Kantianconnotations. ("Sensory makeup" might have given too exclusively pas-sive an idea of Castoriadis's conception thereof.) The 1951 coinage of an-other French word Castoriadis uscs---dlmi¥,xi<--is attributed to Andr~Malraux. This neologism comes from the Greek dnni,uzi,,, meaning cre-ative activiry, workmanship, handicraft. I have merely rendered the wordinto "English"---dnniu,iia-thus availing myself of a minor prerogativecontained in the creative aaiviry of the translator. Following standard editorial practice, 6m names have been suppliedfor all but the most obvious persons mentioned. Herc again. any errorsarc my own. I have consulted the Oxford Clmsic,J Dictionary for spellingsof classical names and places. "Sophist" appears in uppercase when refer-ring to those spcci6cally undcntood 10 fall into that category, but in low-ercase when meant (u far as I could tcU) more generally. Nonsexist language is employed throughout: unspecified persons arcarbitrarily designated as "she" or "he.• This practice, already employedpreviously, was developed in consultation with Castoriadis. One nuance of the French ,ex, has not been rendered into English.Plato's S14tesm11n concerns knowledge, in panicular the tpistimi of the"statcsman." Both 111110ir and conll4issd1"t may be translated as "knowl-edge"; bu, the former has a more formal connotation, while the latter of-ten implies rather a familiarity, as in knowing (S4voir) that one knows(con,wlt). Shott of indicating each specific appearance, it is impossible 10reflect this disrinaion in the translation. Finally, we come to the tide itself of Plato's dialogue. In Greek, it is uPolitiltt,r, in French, Polilifw. The English translation, the Sl4tn,,,.n,is rather unforrunatc, Castoriadis himself noted. 5 Had these seminarsbeen delivered by him directly in English, one could imagine him prefac-ing his remarlu with something like the following: Now, the English tick, the 5'41U11Nln, is panicularly intolerable. I've said on many occasions that the Greek term polis is not ro be cranslarcd as cilJ-SIIIU, for the Greeks didn'r have a sq,ararc scate appantw. To call die person who was ro be occupied with che running of the polis a ,,.,,,,,,.n is, even in Plato's perverse construction concerning the so-called royal man, totally unaccept- able. Yet hert ~ have 1he term enshrined in tradition as the common trans- lation of Plato's dialogue. W£ an not pmend lhar this reality doesn't exist and so mun we this wholly unsuitable term; lei us simply k«p in mind its inad- missibility each. rime we employ it.xxviii On the Tr-anslation

Likewise, when talking about the art of this "statesman" we refer to his"'statesmanship," whereas che Greek original speaks of politiki, which inFrench is /a politique and in English usually is translated as politics. I would add to this imaginary aside the fact that, as opposed: to la poli-tique (politics/statesmanship), k politique can mean not only the states·man but also "the political" (or "the political sphere"), a relatively rccencterm derived from Carl Schmitt's das Politische, which Castoriadis did noteschew.(, I have endeavored each time to choose the correct term in Eng·lish-statesman or the political, politics or statesmanshi~according tocontext. The reader may now judge for herself whether I have successfullysorted out the nuances and ambiguities, or whether alternative readingsmight be called fut.ON PLATO'S STATESMANSeminar of February 19, 1986

I was telling you the last time chat Plato played quire a considerable rolein what can be called the destruction of the Greek world. In the eyes ofhistory, he transformed a de facto destruccion into an apparently de jurcdestruction. Thar is co say, if chc Athenian democracy collapstd in cheend, it was ultimately in the order of things-not in the sense in whichHerodotus says, "All that is great mwt become small," and vice versa, butbecause it was fundamentally rotten, a regime dominated by the ignorantcrowd, the impassioned and passionate crowd, and not by chc wise manor by wisdom, the jwc man or justice. Thw, rather than being a hiswricaltragedy, the fall of Athenian democracy becomes a ~ of immanentphilosophical justice. This he did, in one respect, if I may phrase it thus, "positively'": he ad-vanced che idea that there can and should be an ,pistbni' of policies [/apo/itiqu,), a sure and ccnain knowledge enabling one co be guided in thepolitical domain; that, in chc end, chis 9istimi of statesmanship [/a poli-tiqw] rdies upon a transcendenc knowledge; and even that i1 relics uponuanscendencc itself. h is in this sense, ultimardy, that the regime de-scribed in che Laws can and should be considered-co speak hastily andfacilely-co be much more moderate chan char of che Rrpublic. Plato, asone says, watered down his wine as he aged. That doesn't happen co every-one. but it happened to him. Yee, even though it is more moderate, che regime of the Laws remainsall the same basicalJy a throcratic regime. And it is this regime char, in asense, opens the way nor only to the critique of rhe democratic regime butalso co tM quite ambiguous critique of th, law as such. I shouldn't sayambip,ows. moreover, but wry cle11.r, when this critique is read in the Ou Plato', Statesman

Stat~ma.n (294,a--c) and when it allows Plato to jwtify his claims to be go-ing beyond written_law in the name of a higher form of knowledge. And it's indeed Plato who completely overturns the Greek conceptionof justice as a question that remains constantly open within the city: Whois to give what, and who is to have what? This question constantly posesthe problem of distribution among the citizens and at the same time thwopens the way to further questioning (une inte"ogation]. He thereforeoverturns this definition and makes of justice what could be called andhas, moreover, been called in modern times a holist, or holistic, property,a property of the whole. For Plaro--chis is the conception from the Re-public, this is the conception from rhe law.f-justice is che fact that theciry as a whole is well divided, well articulated, and chat, within thiswhole of the city, each has his place and doesn't cry to obtain another one.According to the famow phrase from the &public, juscice consists in toalltoU npcittEtv ,::a\ µ:fl no>..unpayµovE'iv (Republic 433a), minding yourown business, doing what's yours, what belongs to you, what is your own,what corresponds to your place, without trying to busy yourself witheverything, co be a busybody-this English word being, moreover, the best translation of polupragmonein. But at the same time, it's in Plato that for the first time we have an at- tempt to ground, in right and in reason, a hierarchy within the city. In the Greek city, the existence of freemen and slaves or of the rich and thepoor is a fact. W~lat_C:, _c~i~ -~~pposedly becomes a right-that is,something that rests upon the different natures-Oftlieindividuals ofwh!c~ _!he ~is compose~ To do this, I said, Plato engaged throughouthis workln an immense operation that rums anything to good accountand thac manifests a strange inconsistency, which I have even qualified asperversity-I stand by chis word. Plato constantly rebukes the rhetori-cians, yet he himself proceeds rhetorically in an immense number of in-stances. He tries to garner one's conviction, and he succeeds in doingso-the proof? we're still talking about him-by playing upon the plau-sible, the probable, che likely, by playing even upon the wellsprings ofshame, respectability, and modesty.4fe does so by working on the soul ofche listener, and not only on his reason, in order to try to show him chatthere is good and evil, chat a decent man can only be on the side of thegood/rhose who are evil blwh in the dialogues, like Thrasymachw at rheend of the first book of the &publir. "Thrasymachus agreed co allthat ... but reluctantly and with great difficulty ... and then I saw some-thing I had never seen before: Thrasymachw blushing" (350d). s,,,,;,,,,, ofFd,"""l 19, 1966

It's the same thing as regard. the Sophists. Plato rebukes them, bur he'is himself an incomparable sophist. One cannor count the number of in-r,ntional sophisms and paruogisms that are there in the dialogues. The&public icsdf is one huge articulated sophism, a multi-leveled and multi-staged sophism. The two preceding considerations show that what Plato says againstrhc demagogues can be turned around against him~xccpr char, in hiscase, ir isn't an everyday, physically present dhnos that he's stirring up, thathe's churning up, and that he's trying co carry off in a c.cnain direction. Itis the dimos of the lcru:rcd. men and women of history, of the work's read-ers over the centuries. And for the same reasons, moreover, he, too, is an~idol.opoios, a manufacrurcr of simulacra-what he accuses the Sophists of being-in, for example, everything he recounts about the differing na-tures of human beings, which goes to justify their division into classes in the &public, or the conscious, impudent lies proffered in the third book-..of chc Laws conc.crning the history of Athens, and so on. And at the same cime, chis is someone who, if one goes deeper, is, one:could say, lacking in modesty. He has, char is, an immodesty of the mind,the: immodesty of an ugumentative person. To prove this, I need onlycite the accusation lodged in the Go,ritu l515dff.l against the politiciansof Athens and, notably, againsc Pericles, where: ic is sa.id thac if chose peo- ple were cruly, as rcponed, so jusc, so incdligenc, they would have raised [auraimt /In,/] their sons in corresponding fashion. And this is said bysomeone who was himself a pupil [//n,,) of Socrates, the disciples ofwhom included, on the one hand, Alcibiades and, on the other, a dozenof those who later became the Thiny Tyrants! Thac's the: rcsuh of whacSocrates taught, according to Plato's logid And, secondly, this is said bysomeone who raised no son of his own, nc:ichc:r good nor bad, ncicher inthe direccion of juscic:c nor in chc d.ircccion of injwcicc:. He's got a loc ofcheck, as is said in common pulance, or, in a more noble language, theimmodesty of someone who is a philosophical arguer. Comparing Alcibiades and Placo, one could say thac in a scnse-chough, co suppon the comparison, co pwh ic funhcr, one would have coread chc Sympo1ium in detail, which we cannoc do hcrc-Placo is a son ofinverted Alcibiades. Considerably younger than Alcibiades, undoubtedlychiny years his junior, Plato sublimates this passion for power chac Alcib-iades couldn'r master and that led him to do what he did in the history ofAchcns; Placo cr:rnsposcs ic onto another level, chc level of wricing. ofschooling.. of counsel given to the powerful and to cyrancs. That is whath~ did. it Sttms. in Sicilv with Dionysim and then with Dion. But at the same time, there's a son of indifference on his part to the city that raised him. Again, this contrasts him with Socrates. For Alcibi- ades, Athens is p~ly and simply the inscrument of his own might. When the Athenians recalled him from Sicily, 1 he passed over to the side of Spana and then came back to Athens. Likewise, Plato is completely cold toward Athens; he rebukes it, and not just the democracy. He docs retain a kind of racial pride, so to speak, which is to be found again at the end of the Laws {969c~}, when the l..accdaemonian and the Cretan agree among themselves that they could nt'Ver have succeeded in resolving the problem of the good ciry without the Athenian who accompanies them during this long philosophical march-a march both literal and figura- tive. Plato therefore retains this one point of honor; bur as for the content and substance of Athens, of the Athenian historical creation, he detests it. In any case, he simply uses his situation as an Athenian citizen to profit from what he has learned, to profit from Socrates, who is a son of the ciry, to profit from the paifkja {education} screaming out from Athens, and to profit from his own position. And he uses it finally co found his own school in the gardens of Academus, ~rofiting from the liberalism, from/ the love of liberty, of the Achenians7lwho, once again, allowed someone to open a public-education establishment that rebukes their city, instead of putting him to death right away, as the ephors would have done in his beloved Sparta. To this dimension would have to be added the concern with the aes- thetic appearance of one's life, a concern chat, unless I am mistaken, ap- pears for the first time in antiquity with Alcibiades, thus dissoci.1ted. Plato himself undoubtedly cultivated-and cultivated until the end-the aesthetic appearance of his life and made swe chat his followers, his pupils, the entire Academy, constantly contributed to the fabrication of cl--is myth of Plato, which passes by way of many things-including, probably, the fabricuion of letcers, about which I'll say a word in jwc a moment. From all these standpoints, we can reAcct upon these two children, these two pupils, who were by far the two most brilliant Socrates had: A1- cibiades and Plato. Undoubtedly, too, at chis time (at the end of the fifth century and the beginning of the fourth; thw, after the tragic poets a.nd after Thucydides), they were the two most brilliant Athenians in quite different domains--but both of them were already perverse and did not love their poUJ. Why this influence of Plato's? I shall come back to this question at th(' end. In this inffucncc must be $CC11, on the one hand, what is due to Plato himself, which we have already seen: a wh.ole series of operations, the strategy be puts into effect. But there is also what is due to later times. Hm,, things ar< rdativcly simpl<. I won't talk about Karl Popp<r, who created a kind of countcrprtjudicc. One cannot call Plato toul.itarian or make him into the father of totalitarianism. But on account of his hatred of democracy and on account of what constantly shines through from ,!>im as a desire to 6x the things in the city imo place, co put a halt to the./ evolution of history, to stop sclf-instirution, co suppress sdf-institucion- on this account, Plato obviously becomes, in a certain way, the inspirer of and arsenal for everything in history char will represent this attitude. To put it simplistically: of everything reactionary and pro-establishment; everything opposed ro the democratic movement. This is found again among the Romans, among the first Christians, during the Middle Ages, and in modern rimes. I won't and I can't-it would be an immense task-truly go through th, history of all that. Finally, one mwt, of course, keep in mind the enormous demem of authentic crcacion that exists in Plaro, creation of an inconccscably uans- historicaJ value that is attached ro his work, that is also another kernel of his work, or th< other pole. I don't like to speak too much of a poi,, b,,. c.ausc ir isn't in opposition; the relations between Place's philosophical and 1 lircrary-anistlC--<rcation and what that creation carries along with it, ,that it bears with.in ir, in the way of a political and, of course, philo- ../sophic.al imaginary arc quire strange. There is this other elemcnc, Plato's 1 creation, his incomparable geniw linking at once philosophic.al depth, i Jogical-dialcctical power, literary anistry, and a savoir faire in the politics/ of idcos of which I spok< a moment ago. This has played a big rol< in th< influence he has had; the result is that, while we arc discussing Plato here and wh,n w< discuss the S,,,i,sman, th, &public, and th, Laws, w< shall not be able ro speak of him as if he were simply some ... ideological" au- chor with regard ro whom it would suffic.c to point out his sophisms. Ar each seep, one runs up againsr~nc becomes enraptured [on 1txt.t.ru') be- e.awe one discovcrs--somc philosophical nugget or other; one discovers, in the end, yet another of the roots of whar we think today, of our modes of thought. On PlatoS J[atbman

Before getting to the positive points, it muse be added that with Plato, and for the first rime, we have what later on was called~he partisan spirit in philosophy. It is sumined by his rhetoric and his staging. Before Plato, and even afterward, the philosophers expound their opinions. Rarely, as with Heraclitus, do they have some disdainful remark to make regarding other philosophers. Starting with Plato, they discuss the ideas of their ad- versaries, as Aristotle also did later o~]Placo, however, is the first and per- haps the last philosopher to transfo~m this discussion into a,yeritable combat-and in this sense, he comes close to reminding us of Marx; or, ~er, Marx reminds us of him. Plato really wants to polariz.e his readers, co summon them to choose between chem and us, between the bad guys and the good guys. The bad guys are those who are mistaken [se trompmt] and who want to deceive [trompt'T] the world; and the rest of us are those who are in the truth and in the good, in jwtice. Or he sometimes, in ex- treme cases, stops arguing altogether in order simply to heap ridicule on chem. Bue Plato doesn't limit himself to that. As Aristotle would also later do, he doesn't limit himself to these attacks against them and these refuta- tions. He is also the first one-and here again we see the ambiguity of his creation-who used the weapon Paul Riccrur later called swpicion, whichx, has indeed loomed so large in modern times, with Marx, Nicasche, and Freud. He doesn't say: What you are saying is false and I am going to prove it to you. He asks, r.ather: Why arc you saying what you're saying? And the Why refers not to logical reasons but to subjective reasons in the largest sense: You are saying it because it suits you to do so; you are mak- ing up sophisms because you're a Sophist. And that isn't a tautology. You are a Sophi.st means: You are a merchant of falsehoods, a trader in fallacies, a kapilos, and it is your ontological and social position as a Sophist that makes you say what you are saying. Logical refutation is complemented~ by, if I may put it thus, O_!!.~O!Qg.ita.l. social, and political assignment: You are saying what you are saying because you arc an enemy of the proletariat (Marx). You are saying what you are saying becawe your neurosis leads you to say it (Freud). You are saying what you arc saying because truth is a poison for the weak and becawe you cannot bear it (Nietzsche).· - In Plato, it goes as follows: You arc saying what you are saying because you make a living off of lies. And you are making a living not only in the ~ense chaf you are gcuing pa.id for your lessons-a point Plato insists upon a gre.i.c dca.1-but because you make a living in this way ontologi- 5nn;,.., ofFd,,.,,,,ry 19, 1,S6 o'

cally/2i.c b<ing of the Sopbist is a b<ing that relics upon no1-b<ing. 'Thisis because there is no1-b<ing and the possibility of making no1-b<ing passfor b<ing and b<ing for no1-b<in~which leads 10 the famous ontologi-cal rr:vision made in the Sophist, to the murder of the father, of Par-menidcs. It is therefore because one can mix one with the other, beingand not -bdng. And th.at mans, in a ccnain fashion, that being is noc andthat nor-being is. And moreover, chis quali6cation ;,, a cert11in fmhion is100 much. ~ Plato him,df says in ,he SophiJt {259b}. "Ten thousandtimes ten thousand, being is nm ... and not-being is." And it's becausethere is this ontological connection that you, the Sophists, can exist. And ir is. moreover, from this scandpoint that one can ma.kc the dis-tinction-even if that's nor our principal intcrcst-bcrwccn two groupsof Platonic dialogues. On the one hand, there arc the basically staged andpolemical dialogues, which arc designM to refute one or rwo Sophiscs:the Eut/,ydnnus, the Mmamus, the Go,xias, with the series Polus, Calli-clcs, and Gorgias. These dialogues take place before an audience, a pub-lic, which is like a chorus that prevents the Sophist from persisting in hissophisms by using a kind of silent disapproval that mobilizes an ultimateresidue of shame. Even a Sophist, even Thrasymachw, h2.s some of thatin his soul. And then there arc the dialogues involving real research, the zctctic di-alogues, for which no public is necessary and from which rhc public is infact cntirdy absent. Thus, in the Parmnri.drr some very profoundly out-rageous things arc said there, but there is no public. One is among peopleof good faith-Young Socrates, Parmcnidcs-and one has no need for achorus, for a silent and reproachful judge.

As for the properly philosophical creation, one muse simply recall acer-tain numb<r of points. And already, fim of all, there's the fm that Platois the crcalOr of the interpretation of the positions taken and not only ofthe refutation thereof. It's the fact chat he is constandy rcswning his re-search. Plato is the first person to have cried to 6.x in place the apotias.and perhaps the ways out of these aporias, that for us surround the ques-tion of know!~ and truth. And also the limits of rationality in thisworld. This is basically the theme of the limtUW, and i, comes back allthe rime. He's the fim to aruck vigorously rhc problem that still todayremains the po,u .,;non,m of philosophy and logic: on the one hand, the On Plato's Statesman

relationship berween the universal and the singular (among other texts, this is found in che p.,.,,,tnieks)-to what extent we can say that there is one dog and chat there is one society and that there is one God and chat there is one French language and that there is one number one. In what f sense all that is one, and what the relationship of this Form or Idea or \ eidos of the one is with, on the other hand, the concrete realities (as we , , shall say as Moderns, as post·Kantians), which we c.an chink only with the aid of--or more exactly, by means of-this category of the one. Can we chink by means of this category of the one only, as Kant says, because such is the structure of our mind? Because we cannor think otherwise, and char, allegedly, is something that could be demonstrated? Or is it that we cannot think wirhout the caregory of the one becawc there is rhe one? There is the one, ifl may say so, but where? And we still haven't exited from all chat bee.awe, obviously, the form of the one couldn't be imposed upon the phenomena or upon objccu if something didn't lend itself'> thereto, if something therein didn't permit the propping up [lttayageJ 1and insrrumencation of our categories. Therefore, we cannot simply affirm chat the one is a category. But on the other hand, the idea chat the bne belongs to the things, or chat cawalicy belongs to the things, appears, indeed, co be completely enigmatic and seems to open a gulf about what that can really mean. In a sense, we have hardly advanced since these in- vestigations [interrogations} were laid down and worked out the way they were in the Parmrnieks, in the Theaetetus, or, in another fashion, in the PhikbUJ and in certain passages from the Republic. We shall sec some examples of chis while speaking about the S14tesman.

Plato's Statesman

And so, without further delay, we can now turn to hand-co.hand

wrestling with this dialogue. Bue here again, there'll be some prdiminar· ies, and this is going to seem complex and disordered to you bccawc I don't know chc means whereby I could speak of an imponant work or an important subject in a manner that would be both true and linear, weU· ordered. I don't know how to speak about it other than by taking it by one end, coming back, going further, turning the thing over, making di. gressioru, and so on. There will therefore be a lot of back and forth in this discussion-as there is, moreover, in the text of the StaNmran itself. A second poinc: Why chose to begin with the Statesman? For three rca· sons, basically. And first of all, for a reason that is relatively contingent to s,,,,;,.,,, ofFebrwuy 19. 198'

our work this year. Given our object in this seminar, we cannot make an in-depth and detailed analy,is of all the texts that intcrcsr us. During rhe put rwo years, we did this work around a phrase from Anaximandcr, a chorus Ii-om Antigon,. one or rwo spc:,chcs in Thucydides, bur this year ir's impoosible ro make a genuine analysis of the &public, of the Staus- man, and of the Ulws, then of Aristotle's Politics and of rhc other texts that come afterward. And on the other hand, I want w to do some work rogcthcr thar, though far from cxhawrive, will be an in-depth work upon a determinate text. Let's grapple with a text to sec what it means ro work genuinely on a tat. And the only one available from the standpoint of size is the Statmnan. The Republic is too long. The LAws, like Aristotle's Politics, is huge. The second reason is that chc St4trsman belongs to what I shall in a minute be calling Plato's fourth and lase period. It's a ten in which, in a sense, and without being roo Hegelian abouc it, the results of his cncirc prior development arc implicitly found sed.imenrcd. And there's nae much more to come. From this standpoim, che Siaumwn virtu.ally con- tains Placo's philosophical trajectory-the problrmacic, the aporias, and the anrinomies of this trajectory. They can be drawn out of the Siaumum and out of what appear to be the incoherencies in chis dialogue and its strange goings-on (lmlngltis]. This impression of incoherency and/nrangcness [lmr"f&'] comes in a second moment. In the first moment, one rclls oneself while reading through this dialogue that things arc going quite wdl, chat ir's just Plato or Plato's idiosyncrasies. In the second place, things don't go at all. And then, i.n a third place, a sort of struaure is sal- vaged. And, ac a fourth level, one gets a glimpse thar this scructurc itself contains some very deep faults and chat these faults arc no accident; these arc the faults of Placo·s though,, and perhaps of all though,. A third rason: this fourth period of Plato's is embodied and mani- fested in the Siaumt1tn via a basic change relating co a point rhac in ap- peuance is minor but chat goes very far, because, here again, given the magmatic scrucrure of thought, one can cake off from ic co find nearly everything. The change thar is ,here in rhe Swnman is the change rela- tive to chc definition of he who is suitable [proprr] co govern, chat is co say, the srarcsman [I, politiqu,], the political man, or the royal man. In rhe Rrp"bli<'s definition, he who is suitable to govern is identified with the philosopher, once he has undergone adequate cra.ining. In the Siau1- ""'"· no direct mention is made of him, but the royal man-co whom we shall return lam on-appears not as a shepherd [b,,;gerJ-that's the 6m,o On Plato's ::>catcsman

definition, which is later abandoned-but as a royal weaver. What he

weaves, as we shall sec later on, isn't very coherent, either. lc's disparate,not so much because .the things woven together arc disparate but bccawcrhey are situated at different levels: on rhc one hand, they're the differentindividuals of the polis; on the other hand, they're the different pares ofthe souls of individuals. And no one-to-one correspondence can be madefrom one term to the other. And then, even this royal weaver turns out not to be the true definitionof the statesman. There is a third, subjaccnt definition of him, which isnot the philosopher and doesn't lead to him either. And this ddi.nirion, infact, prepares the way for the type of regime and government Plato de-scribed lacer on in the LawJ. And in rhe latter dialogue, while the mem-bers of the much talked-about nocturnal council arc philosophers, cdu-o.ted as such and endowed with a curriculum vitae that reminds one ofthe philosophers of the &public, in a sense they arc not-not formally, atleast-the ones who govern. The true governors in the city of the lawJare magistrates, and these magistrates arc elected. And the Stausman isthis passage, this ford, the place where the waters become shallower andwhere one can pass from one bank to the other. One can pass from theregime defined absolutely in the &public as the power of the philosophersto the regime of the lawJ, where there are elective magistrates whosestrings-to speak coarsely-arc pulled in a sense by the nocturnal coun-cil. That situates the Statesman at quite an important point in Plato'soverall development. I would like co say now how I intend to speak about this dialogue.There arc six points:

1. a few words about the dace and historical situation of the Statesman inPlaro's oeuvre, then about its general problematic;2. the StateJmani structure as such and its scrangencs.s, this jumble[enchroitn'mentJ of definitions, incidental poims, and digressions;3. the two definitions;4. the eight incidental points;5. the three digressions;6. the problem of composition: Is there or is there not a strucnuc hiddenbc:hind what appears to be an entirely baroque edifice, with two maincowers, three adjoining cowers, and eight secondary buildings?

And, finally, if we have the time, we shall take the opportunity to make a Sn,,;,,,,, •fF,lmuuy ,,. 19'6 ll

sort of critical inventory of everything there is in it-unless we do so

along the way.

I. Date and Historical Siruation of the Statmrllln

Almost all authors an: agreed thar the S..usman is ro be sit11ared bc-rwccn 367 and 360 B.C.E. Some, including myself, would opr for a larcrdate. Why this dating? This is connected with the whole story of Plaro'svoyages ro Sicily. Born in 418, Plaro was ar lcasr rhiny years old whenSocrarcs was condemned ro death (in 399). Ahcr Socrates' death, Plaro-likc, moreover, Socrates' other djsciples-perhaps fearing that this scn-rcnce might have legal consequences for rhe «s< of his disciples, leftAthens. Plato himself withd«w for some rime co Mcgua, where he verysoon founded a school of Mcgaritc.s that continued a certain side ofSocrates' teaching. Then he undoubtedly made a series of voyages, in-cluding certainly one ro Egypt, bcrwccn 399 and 387. Around 387-386, hefounded the Academy at Athens. Before chat, in 38S-387-and we havehere testimony independent of Plato's ~there was the first voyageto Sicily. There he met the tytmr Oionysius I and struck up friendships,which later proved to be imponant, with An:hytas, one of the las, greatPythagoreans (who were then very active in southern Italy, in MagnaGraccia), and with Dion of Syncusc, son-in-law of Oionysius. Legend has it that, during his trip home, Plato was akcn prisoner bypirates and sold either a, A<gina or at Corinth. A more elaborate legendeven reports that a number of philooophcrs were meeting a< that very mo-ment in Corini:h and that, when they saw Plaro on the slave block, theychipped in together right away ro buy him back! One may think that thisis too l,n, trolldlO to be uuc. I myself have many doubts. Following the tradition, both of the Uttm and cha< of the doxogra-phcrs, there would have been rwo other voyages in Sicily char were tied tothe cwists and turns of Sicilian politia. Dionysius I, a very asrure and verypowerful politician, had died. His son Dionysius II then acceded ropower. Dion, who was the son-in-law of the two Dionysiuscs--Diony-sius's family alrairs were very complicated, mixing polygamy, inccsr, andso fonh-was also a very brillianr young man, probably Plato's mnnmos,nor necessarily in rhe physical sense but in the form of an amorousfriendship Ii~ the one described in i:hc Symposium. Plaro considered himthe one who might be able to pu1 his philosophe, ideas into politicalll

practice. And according to chis tradition, Plato is said to have returned to

Sicily in 367, in response to an appeal from Dion, in order to transformthe young Dionysiw into a philosopher-king. This he f.iilcd to do.Dionysius broke with Dion and exiled him buc sought ro retain Placo atSyracuse. Plato is said to have refused. Three years later, still according to rhc same tradition of the ltttn'l andthe doxographcrs, Placo made a third voyage co Sicily, Oionysiw havingpromised him a number of things, including chc recall of Dion. ButDionysius failed co keep his promises, held Plato prisoner, and finally re-leased him only after the imcrvencion of the Pythagorean Archytas ofTar-enrum. Four years afo:rward, Dion landed in Sicily and expelled Dionysiwfrom power. A few years of crud and sordid civil war ensued. And finallyDion was assa.ssinarecl by another student of the Academy, Callippw. There would therefore have been, according ro chis tradition and thelerun, especially the seventh one, three voyages co Sicily. That in 387 iscertain. The two others, in 367 and 362 1 are the subject of polemics. Whydo the "dogged minority" of scholars, as M. I. Finley calls them, refwe coaccept these two other voyages? (I'm noc a "scholar," but I belong to thisminoriry.)2 There are two reasons at lease. First, neither Diodorw Sicu-lus-who speaks ;,,_ txtmso, however, of Sicilian a.ffa.irs, of the fall ofDionysius, and of Dion's campaign-nor Aristotle utters a word aboutthem. And yet Aristotle was at che Academy in 367 as wdl as in 362; andin the Politin, he talks about Dion. It is unclear why he wouki not havementioned Plato's going to Sicily. The second reason is that, in any case, for him to have undertaken athird voyage-that is to say, co have believed Dionysiw's promises a sec-ond rime and returned to Sicily-would show in Plato a sort of radicaland incurable inability co judge human beings that is really too hard toimpure to him. Whatever Plato's desire co influence a king or a tyrant ora holder of power might have been, it cannot be believed that he couldhave been mistaken on this point a srcond time apropos of an individuallike Dionysiw. This impos.sible gullibility is also, thereby, a contributing factor in re-jecting the authenticity of the Lrttm. And there arc good reasons that al-low us co understand why at the Academy, very early on, these Uttrnwould have been fabricated: to reinforce, 6rst off, the legend of a Plato ac-rempcing by every means to test out, to realize his ideas; and, secondarily,to try co redeem the behavior of rwo students of the Academy, Dion (the Snni,wr oflwmutry 19, 19'6 13

pretend., and rben quasi tyrant; sec FinlcyP and Callippw (the assassin).Thrrc att so many unpleasant things in the affair that it would be veryconvenient to cover them over with the great figure of Plato, who, him-self, mad, a try, risked his lik for his ideas, and then came back. However, what stands in the way of the 4tbdisis, as the philologists say,of the refusal to accept the authenticity of the Uttm, is, however, thequality of the Snnith Lmn, which is quire beautiful and very profound.From the outstt, the jusrific.ation for Plato's no longer getting mixed upin politics after Socrates' conviction is entirely convincing. Then there'sthe extraordinary passage about language's relationship with ordinaryknowledge, with the knowledge of the thing., themselves and of the Ideas,and with the much tallccd-abour r.cAiph,,b. It's here char he says that allthe othrr forms of knowledge are preparatory for true knowledge. Onemwt be cra.incd in those forms, but they aren't what bring uuc knowl-edge. They arc like the prdiminary "rubbing" that eventually, at an inde-terminate and unexpected-surprising (euiphnir. suddcn)-momcnt,m2kcs the ffame shoot up, the ffasne that lights up at once the object andthC' subject and thac permits one to see. That's what all logic, all d.iscw·sion, all mathematics, all dialectics serve to foster. h is preparatory. Andthis recalls what mystics said later on abouc the fact that myscic.al a.scni·cism is there to prepare for a moment of clairvoyance that cannot beforced or wrung out. Knowledge-true knowledge, ultimate knowl-edge-is described in this Snnith l..rtkr. And this description corre-sponds well enough to what is said in the Symposi"m, in the Phaedrw,and in the &p,,J,li, iudf about the soul's relationship with knowledge todunk that, if this Sn,n,d, ~ is not authentic in the literal sense-isnot authentic for the facts of the third voyage-it is authentic for thephilosophical treatment ir provides on the question of knowledge's rela·tionship with its object. Anyhow, the Sta""""n can be catalogued as having been written onlyaher the dare of the alleged second voyage. And if there were second andthird voyages, it would perhaps be between those two, perhaps aher thethird. If you've read the Sutaman, you may recall that it comes in thewake of the Sophist, which is supposed to come aher the Tlmuutw. Andat the same time, there's the promise of a fourth dialogue, which wasn'twritten and which would have been th, Philosopkr. The rhrcc existing dialogues and the fourth, the promi>cd dialogue, the~ . are linked by a sort of round of dw-acters, a circular dance of On PLuo's Statesman

the protagonists. In the Theaetetus, ir's Socrates who asks the questionsand it's the young Theactetus who answers. In the second dialogue, theSophist, it's still Theaetetw who answers, but the questioner is rhe Strangerfrom Elea, the xenoJ. A remark: in Greek, xenos doesn't mean only stranger,foreigner, bur also and especially he who receives the treatment reserved for foreigners, that is to say, hospitality. There is a Zeus Xenios, protectorof foreigners; and xenia is hospitality. XenoJ ekatis is therefore both thestranger as well as che guest, the invited visitor from Elca. Nevertheless, we shall say the Stranger from Eka--<Ven though the Ekatic friend would be more faithful-since that's how he is known and since the Moderns adopt it because it's chic: he's a stranger who enters into the game. In the third dialogue, the StateJman, the Stranger from Elea remains che questioner. That's the point that remains fixed with regard to the Sophist. And this is foretold explicirly: the person being questioned is Young Socrates, a young Athenian at the end of his adolescence, like Theaetetus, who happens to have the name of Socrates-at one point, moreover, Socrates plays on this, saying chat Theaeretus looks like him, that he is ugly like Socrates, and that Young Socrates has his name. One can assume that the latter, like Theaetetw, is very intclligem. In the promised but never written fourth dialogue, the PhiloJOpher, the person questioned would again have been, for reasons of symmetry, Young Socrates, and the questioner should have been Socrates. If we belonged co the structuralo-deconscructionisr school, we could ramble on about the fact that Theaetecus, like Socrates, is very intelligent and very ugly; that in the end, when it comes to defining the true philosopher, we'll have the true philosopher questioning Young Socrates; we'll have a return of logoJ into its identity, including from the scandpoim of rhe speakers [des inonciateun) and not only from that of their utter· ances [de1 lnoncb]; and chat, as by chance this fourth dialogue was not written, it lies within the margin of the Platonic text. Under this form, all rhat stuff doesn't interest us. What interests us is the content and the de- velopmental process of Platonic thought. This tetralogy with a pare missing-the Theaetetus, the Sophist, the Sta~sman, and the Philosopher (which wasn't written)-is arti6cial, in my opinion, as a tetralogy. The three existing dialogues really do belong to what I am calling the fourth period, but the TheaetetuJ is nevertheless rather different from the other two. Its object is as follows: What is called knowledge or knowing? h is an essentially aporetic dialogue: it doesn't ar- SnniMr •fFtbrwzry 19, 1986 15

rive anywhere [nizboutit p,u), and that, too, is the genius of Plato. The Th~utmu is an enormow, extraordinarily rich dialogue that asks whatknowledge is and ends up admitting: For the moment, we don't know!_ :'[ ·~·u sec each other again tomorrow. What daring! The Modems don't do ,·things lik, that! When they do, it's a bit rotten. The Th,-,,,, proacd.s dialogically. And as in most of the Platonic di-alogues, the dialogic form is both false and true. Bue in the end the dia·loguing form isn't supcrfluow, whereas it is entirely so in the Sophist andthe Suztmnan. There, chc dialogue is a pure artifice, which irritates ado-laccnts who come across these dialogues in high school and can't helpbut ask themselves what these goings on [proddis) arc all about.• Above all. the logical insrrumcncation of the Sophist and the Statrsman isn't in the form of a dialogue bur is to be found, rather, in ics diacrctic tool, inlogical division and those interminable divisions the much talked-aboutStrang,r from Elca deploys both in the S,pl,i,1---Plato deploys six levelsof division in order to try to capture the sophist, who always escapes,never letting himself be caught within a division-and in the Statnman,where there are two consecutive definitions, which, as we shall s«, don'tin fact succeed [ndboutissmt pm] in capturing the statesman. From th.is standpoint, then, then: is no dear unity bctwccn the Tillar~·tw, on the one hand, and the Sophist and the Statemum, on the other,whcrt2S the latter two dialogues an: acrually all in one piece. This is so notonly because of the presence of the Suang,r from Elca but also because ofthe devices [procidls] he employs. For, this xmo,, this guest-friend, has indramatically quite correct and c.onvincing fashion an identical scyic of dis·cussion in the cwo dialogues: his mania for diaeresis, his obsession wi,hdivision, an obsession successfully handled in both dialogues. And they arc all in one piece also because of their conccm. For-andhere again, one could amuse oneself by doing some stf~curalo-dccon·suuctionism-chcre's a link and an opposition in the contcn(; there's ajoinc aniculation. The Sophi.JI talks about falsehood and not·bcing; ircalk.s about the corruption of the philosopher that che sophist is; it (al.ksabout the fabrication of falsehood; and it doesn't talk, or talks only veryincidentally, about the philosopher, which is understandable since thereshould have been a founh dialogue, the Pl,il,,,oph,,-. And the Stat,,manralk.s abour the true statesman and talks only incidentally about the falsestatesman. Well, suucturalism being basically a mncmotechnicaJ procc·dun:, this gives us the following diagram, 16 On Plato$ ~tatcsman

T = true; F = false. One has true knowledge--wdl, one should have

had it; 1ha1's the Philmophtr (cj,). One has false knowledge, too; that's the Sophi.Jt (a). One ha.s true praxis; chat's the St11utman {Po/itiltos in Greek} ('ff). Bur we're missing something; there's a blank(?). And that's how one,,-/gees oneself elected to the AcadCmic fran~isc! Why is there a blank here? Obviously, this blank isn't completely a blank, bccawc in the Staumian there's a moment when, between the lines, indirectly, one can sec what the false statesman, the demagogue, is. He's talked about a little at the end. Bue the subject would have merited a real treatment of its own. And then the true tctralogy would have been: the Philosopher, the Sutusman, the Sophist, and the Dmwgogsu. The demagogue was treated, bm always very indirectly. Whenever he can, Plato cakes potshou at the politicians; in rhc Stausman, he has some very disparaging words for Thcmismclcs. Bue there is no dialogue chat accacks chc demagogue head-on and that would be the Sophist's counterpart. Yet we still have, in chis whole story, a unity of content-that is ro say, the conccprs, the great themes char connect together [articulmt] these two dialogues. But this in face concerns four dialogues, rwo of which arc not wrincn, even if the end of the Statesman talks a bit about alleged statesmen, people who pretend co be so without truly being so. And we should have had:

• The Phiknopher: Socrates would there be questioning Young Socrates;

• che Staumum: the Stranger from Elca questioning Young Socrates; • the Sophist: the Stranger from Elea questioning Theactcrus; • the Drmagogue: Socrates would there be questioning Theactccus.

As for the most important philosophical prcsupposicions, it must be

nored chat the Sophist and rhc Statesman belong par excellence to that se- ries of dialogues where new points of view arc put in place. The~ still arc aporia..s; bur whereas in the early dialogues, these aporia.s were abovc all verbal and norional, here they arc entirely real. And these are dialogues th•u grant and place ar the center of their preoccupations the mixed and no longer the pure ideas. To speak in more facile terms: no longer the ab- 17

solu« but the miud, the real, the approximate, chc ,dative. On the po-litical plane, this is aprcsscd through what in the Sta~1man is called thes«ond uvig11.tion. dnan-os plow. There's a first navigation, char of the Rr-publi., wruch yield. the true truth and the good city. Only, WC can't claimto be realizing this idea; or dsc, such a realization could only be chc resultof chance. We therefore have to be content with a second choice, which isdcsctibcd later on, in the u,w, (739<), where it is also said that chis city, intclation to the city of the Republic, is, according to the tcading of themanuscripts, either ,,,u, tkuln'Os, second according to the deep-seated in-ternal unity, or timUI UUUTOs, second in dignity. Timia dnttniJs is OttoApclt's correction, I bdi~c, but I am in agreement with Pierre Vid.a.J-Na-quct in saying that mUI tkuUTos would be the righc reading.~ h is reallymuch more profound as an expression to say that the city of the Laws issecond in unity, in the intensity of the articulations of its parts, in rela-tion to the city of the Repubuc. If, chcrcforc, conuavcni.ng all the most respected conccmporary rules,we address ourselves to the content of the dialogues and co chc evolutionof Plato's philosophical thought in order to group the dialogucs--this is ageneral digression, but an indispensable one if one wants to talk about Plato--wc sec that, in adopting the right criteria--whlch I am going (0explain-this grouping pretty much coincides, on the one hand, with rheclassifications made according to so-called cnernal criteria---darcs, refer-ences to charaaers present or mentioned in the dialogues-and, on theother hand, with the much talked-about stylomctric analysis, that is tosay, the chtonological layout of the dialogues according to indices of srylc,statistics relating to partidcs and expressions Plato wcs. There arc, then,four groups of dialogues: t. First, the Socmic dialogues, which ate his youthful dialogues. Wich-out wanting to enter into the much raikcd-about and insoluble prob-lcm--Who is the true Socrates? Who is the crue Plato? Where docsSocrates end and where docs Plaro bcgin?-we have some dialogues chatquite ccnainly continue, perhaps in giving a more thorough look to it,the Socratic reaching: th< Apology, Crito, the first Akibiad,,, Eutl,yphro,ucl,a, Ly,u, Cham,ilk,, the tw0 HippiaJ, and Ion. 1. Then we have a second phase, which hasn'r until now been separatedout as a phase, but I think that ir mwr be .separated out. It is a transi-tion.al pb.asc and a phase of anadts against th< Sophists. During this pe-riod, we have some dialogues chat ar(' in a sense purely polemical, con-18 On Plato's Statesman

trary co chose of the last period, which arc interrogatory without greatpolemics. These as well as chose of rhc third period arc among the mostbeautiful: chis is Plato's mature phase, when he was in full possession ofhis poetic powers. Herc we have che ProtagoraJ, the Euthydnnu.s, theMrnrxmw, the GorgiaJ, and the first book of the Republic-which is of-ten called ThrasymachUJ after rhc Sophist who is Socrates' principal intcr-locucor there. It is obvious chat the Protagoras, the Euthydmius (the dialogue thatridicules the Sophists the most), and the Gorgias thoroughly attack theSophists. The "Thrasymachu.s," too. The Mmexmus plays a bit the role of the piece that could furnish the material for illustrating the empty box here, because, with its parody of the Athenian funeral oration, it's a kind of charge lodged against the politicians or the demagogues (in Plato's sense) who go around celling stories. What they were recounting, as pre- sented in the Menexenus, is so improbable that, for serious readers, it can only backfire against the orator. 3. The rhird phase involves the discovery, affirmation, and deployment of the theory ofldeas. One can begin this phase with the Mmo, and it in- cludes the four great "idealist" dialogues: the Phaed.o, the Phaednn, the Sympo,;um, and the bulk of the &public. 4. Finally, there's the fourch phase, which extends from the height of Plato's maturity to his old age, and which I begin with the Cratylw, a deeply aporetic dialogue. Ir is absurd to say, as many commentators do, that Plato upholds the theory that some words are naturally correct Uusw] and that others arc not so. The Cratylw is absolutely aporetic and ,ows enormous confusion, because it investigates our relationship to lan- guage and language's relationship to things and poses the question: Since what we state as truth goes by way oflanguage (to formulate it in modern,terms), how must language be in order that we might be abll" to state a truth? It's taken hold of at one end, the correspondl"nce of the terms of language with things, but that's the problem chat is being taken up. Therl" arc, then, the Cratylw, the Theutetus, the ParmniilUs, three highly aporccic dialogues, and the results of this apori11 and aporbis, which arc given in the Sophist, the Stawm11n, the Ti1n11ew plus the Critias, and the Phil.ebw-and the laws in quite coherent fashion come at the end. And it's in these lase dialogues chat the theory of the mixed is posited and expounded upon ro the furchest extent possible: Smrin,,r ofF,b,.,,,,ry 19, 1986 19

• The Sophist begins by dissolving the ab.olutism of Parmcnidcan being

while imposing the truth that not-being is and being is not always or notunder all aspects;• then the St4tmn4n, we shall sec, opens the way to the abandonment ofthe &public's absolutism in the maner of politica.1 regimes;• the liman,s establishes the mixed on the ontological and cosmologicalplane and makes the god himself, the dcmiurgc, incapable of doing morethan is possible according to the nature of things, namely, according tothe nature of the matter he fashfons, on the one hand, and according tothe nature of the numbers by means of which he fashions nature sincethese numbers don't allow one to do as one wishes;• and, finally, there's the Phi~bus, which, under the pretext of talkingabout pleasure, states a number of extremely important theses abouc thefact that all that is is a mixtutt of one and several as well as of dcccrmina·tion and indetermination, of pmu and apnron. And the Law1 come at theend of this founh and last period in entirely coherent fashion.

II. The Object and Structure of the Sl4tnman

The manifest object of the dialogue is given by its tide and by the dis-cussion: to 6nd a definition of the statesman. Nevertheless, Plato explic- itly states the opposite in the dialogue itself, and this has to be taken seri-ously. At a given moment (185d), the Stranger from Elca says, It isobvious chat wc arc not seeking the statesman for his own sake; we don'thave that much to do with him. AU this is for us an exercise in dialectic.We learn to divide as we should by adopting the criteria we should adopt.But it is quite evident that this second level is only a pretext; and that, ina third Hage, it really is the scatcsman who is Plato's preoccupation here;and that the ride of the Stausman is perfccdy justified. What interestsPlaro, as in the Sophist, is to define the sophist and the statesman, that isto say, this kind of grid-mapping of the highest human activities: on theone hand, those concerning knowledge; praxis, on the other. When hetdls w chat all that is only a pretext to learn co divide correctly {comm~ iif4a,tJ, wc could say, coarsdy: Tell that to the marines! That isn'c true; hedoesn't dtoosc the division of lice or cockroaches to show us how to learnto divide. In psychoanalytic jargon, it isn't just by chance that he choosesche sophisc and rhc scaccsman; he chooses rwo objects that arc of passion- 20 n,, Plato~· Statesman

ate imerest to him as such, and it's these two objects that arc going to bear the brunt of diacrctic analysis. But if they're going co bear the brunt of it, that's because Plato has some negative or positive accounts to settle with the question of the sophist and the statesman in genera.I. So much for the object of the dialogue. The structure of the Statesman, as one can glimpse quite immediately while reading through it, is quire strange. The Sophist, too, is constructed very bizarrely, bur the strangeness there, however, is much less pro- nounced. Briefly speaking, in the Sophist, there are six successive attempts at definition: after the sixth, one returns co the fifth, which constitutes an anomaly. But all these definitions serve a certain purpose, presenting the Sophist in the guise of various disreputable practitioners; all these defini- tions are attempts to compose a portrait of the Sophist that is as dis- paraging as possible. And there is only one lengthy digression-which ap- parently comes about by accident but had, in reality, long been in preparation-that of being and not-being. This is a rather complex fea- ture in the development of Plato's work, and it's difficuJt to pronounce on the matter with certaincy. But in the Parmmitks, where both Parmenidc:s and his enthusiastic student Zeno-his rrommos (it's obvious that in the dialogue Zeno was Parmenides' paidilta, his young beloved)-are present,/ the old master Parmenides' very own teaching-that is to say, that being is and that not-being is not, and that there is, moreover, only the one-is put to a very severe test. It is made clear that this teaching cannot but lead to a series of impasses. In my opinion, that is the teaching of the Par- menidrs. One is left with this negative conclusion. The Sophist furnishes, therefore, ics positive complement by way of the much ralked-about parricide {241dl, that is, the moment when the Stranger from EJea says: Our father Parmenides mwt now be killed; chis horrible thing muse be said, that being is not and that nor-being is. He works this out positively, ifl may put it so; he gives an entirely new ver- sion of the theory of Ideas, which he himself calls the supreme ltind.s j254c}. And he gives the five forms of supreme kinds-being, the same,, the otji_er, rest, movement-as always being; today, we would perhaps say: 1 the ontological transcendentals from which all that is is made. (Paren- thedcally, we may note that this is dearly so for being, the same, and the other. Bur for rest and movement, the term mowmmt obviously shouldn't be taken in the Galilean or pose-Galilean sense: until Galileo, and in any case among the Greeks, movement doesn't mean only local movement. Snniur ofF,lmvz,y 19, 1986 21

Movcmcnc: is change; it's alteration. In Aristotle, chis is qui1c dear; and i1

is so in Plato, too. When it is said that rest and movcmenr appertain cothe supreme kinds, chat mnns immutability, on the one hand, and rhcpossibility and the effective acrualiry of alteration, on the other. Andthat's what the Sophut says.)' This digression in the Sophist comes naturally in relationship to theddinition of the Sophist, because the latter has to be defined as a craf-fickrr in not-being. Bue how can one be a rraffidccr in not-being if not-being is not~ Noc-being mwc be, in a certain fashion; and it mwr be pos-sible co present being as not-being and vice versa. Therefore, in chisapparently trivial, not co say derisory, way, one of the greatest theorems ofphilosophy from ia beginnings to the present day-that not-being is and that being is not-is introduced on the basis of the definition of this manufacturer of false images. Behind chis, there is, as is immediately clear, a whole series of interrogations chat the Sophists and then the Mcgarians were al.ready raising: How is the faJ,c possible if the false is dc- finrd as stating what is not? Bur Parmcrudcs says: What is nor is not, pe- riod. One can't even say it-which, in the end, would reduce Parmcnidcs himself to silcnc.e. One had to get out of all that. And one gets out of it with the Sophist, with its unique, central ontological digression. 5,.,,,,,,,,,,., In the things aic quite different. The strucnue is quirky [bi,- CM'1tue): ic includes two definitions of the statesman, neither of which is tht" correct one [/.o bonnt') from Plato's point of view. The right [bonne)ddinition is hidden within the dialogue; it's played like a chaiadc. Therearc, in addition, three digressions and eight incidental points. And if onewctt Pythagorean, one might say that eight is two to the third power! So,it's normal that there arc eight incidental points, since there arc two defi-nitions and three digressions. The Staum.an begins with a short preamble (2j7a-258b). Then comesthe first definition: 1hat of the staccsman as pastor [p.u,n,r]. This fim def-inition goes from 258b to 2nc, where ic will be abandoned. But along theway, there's ,he exposition properly ipcaking (258b-267), along with thecritique of the definition, which is made in scvcru places (267c-268d,274>-275a, 275b--<). The first definition is expounded through a kind ofdownward division, of dichotomy with the different species of knowledge(tbcomical ltnowlcdgc/practical knowledge), and finally one arrives acthis idea of the pastor. In there we have two incidental poincs, both of which arc vccy impor- 22 On Pl.atoj S:acesman

cam from the philosophical point of view. First (162a-263b), there's the distinction between spCcies and pan-and, if one is the slightest bit a philosopher, one sees right away that chis is an absolutely enormow ques- tion. What is a part and what is a species? The human species is a part of the animal kingdom! Well. well! And then the legs are a part of man but aren't a species. What's going on? The second incidencaJ point (263c-164e) is just as important. If one doesn't pay attention, che point of view of the person who is dividing can be fatally dererminarivc for the content of the division being performed. Thar's the content of chis second incidental point: Watch out for the sub-Y jecrive point of view in the divisions one performs. Next, after a recapitulation of che first definition, there's che critique of chis first definition: The statesman cannot be the pastor. Why? First of all, because there are other arts also that attend to {sOcC'Upmt] the raising of men. Next, because a pastor properly speaking attends to everything, whereas the statesman doesn't. And here, all of a sudden, and before go- ing further into his criticisms, there is a first major digression: the ex- traordinary myth of the reign of Cronw. It's really brought in like a free association; for, in Greek, a pastor is nom(UI, &om the verb nemein, which means at least two things: co divide, on the one hand; and then ro tend and pasture [fairt paltre], to attend to a Oock. [troupeau] or something else. The pastor is by his essence superior co the beings he tends and pas- tures; he is superior to the goats, to the sheep. He is of another species, as a marcer of fact. Therefore, had there been a pastor of men, chis pastor ought m have been a god. And as a matter of face, there was--in the time of Cronus, actually-a divine pastor! It's under this ultrachin pretext chat chis cxcraordinary digression about the reign of Cronus is incroduc.cd; it runs from 268a to 274. We shall talk about it at length. Back, then, to the supposedly principal purpose, so as to concinuc the critique of the statesman as pastor by saying chat, as a matter of fact, there might have been a confusion of the human pastor and che divine pastor. le is recalled that the definition is too broad. And so it is partially revised: it mwc be said not only chat he is pastor but chat he is agtlaioltomos, chat is to say, that in a c.crtain fashion he cares for [soigne] the Rocks (275c-276e). And then. in unexplained fashion, in 277a-<., the Stranger says: None of chat will do; chis definition has to be abandoned. But he doesn't say why. And therefore the Rock and che encire pastorale are dropped. Sm,;,.,,, efF,brw,ry 19, 1986 lj

The Stranger then introduces a third incidental point, which is a new

methodological principle. The firsr two incidental points have alreadymethodologically grounded the device of diaeresis that follows 1Virh thestories of the pastor, the herdsman [pa,tn,r) of horned and nonhornedanimals, and so on and so forth. Treated there were the still-to-be-madedistinction between pan and element and the fact that one must be care-ful not to introduce subjective elements into the basis and criteria for di-vision-for, in that case, cranes would divide animaJs into cranes andnoncrancs rhc way the Greeks divide humans into Greeks and non-Grccks, barbarians. And that won't do: there, one isn't dividing accordingto what is objective but instead according to a subjective point of view.Like, therefore, these first two incidental points, incidental point numberthree is the methodological preamble for what follows. That is to say, thewhole definition given on the basis of weaving, the ddi.nirion of rhcstatesman as weaver. The third incidenta1 point concerns rhc paradigmand its dcments. le concerns the absolutely fundamencal problem that westill face coday: How is one to think one ching on the basis of another thing? Do I encounter difficulties chinking one thing by attacking it head-on, or do I not know how to take it? What I can do is find a para-digm, find something else that presents enough of a kinship or that in anycase allows itself to be articulated and deployed in a sufficiently fecundfashion for me then to be able to come back to the first thing and say:OK, now I can broach it lilc, thar. Of course, this incidental point skins the previow question: How do Iknow chat weaving is a good paradigm for the statesman's an? This is onlya varianr of the problem previously mentioned by Plato in the Phardo andin the Pluudnu: How is it that I know what a human being is before hav-ing seen a human being? And how is ir char I could glean the idea of a hu-man b<ing, saying, "All those :uc human b<ings," if I didn'r already havethe idea of a human being? Or, for thac matter, how can I seek somethingif I don't know whac I am seeking alrn.dy? Plato's metaphysic.al responsein che previow dialogues was the theory of anamncsis: it's that I have infact always known it, but chis knowledge is buried, hidden; someone hasto awaken it. Whence Socrates' gnosioanalysis, his maieuric, which deliv-ers what i.s nonconsciow in che human being, even in the slave from cheMmv. it delivers the truths he possesses because he has already seen themin another life. This third incidental point-and raking into account rhe faa that the4 On Plato$ ..)tatesman

Stat~Jman belongs to the period of the mixed in Plato's thought~ffers,

if I may say so, a human way of solving this aporia. Better still: not a so-lution but a way of gffi'erning rhis aporia. Why? Bccawc the third inci-dental point has meaning only upon chc presupposition that, in thethings themselves, there arc intrinsic kinships that arc more than jwt for-mal, or arc formal but in the very suong sense of the term, in the sensechat the form would very heavily determine the content. There arc kin-ships among things that allow one in a fruitful and valid way to pass fromone category of things ro another, to pass from weaving to the statesman.This is not for Plato simply an easy way of expounding upon the matter:his whole development here can be valid only if there effectively is some-thing from both sides that is sufficiendy close, in a sufficiently adequatemanner, for something about the statesman to be able to be thought onceone has elucidated the paradigm of weaving, once that leads coward thestatesman, if one has a preoccupation of that type. And therefore, on the basis of th.is third incidental point, one arrives atthe second definition of the statesman as weaver, which cakes up the en-tire end of the dialogue. And it begins with an exposition (279b---28oa)that delights historians of technical inventions [hiJtorims iU kl teclmiqut]about weaving itself and the various ways of weaving. As Ulrich von Wtl-amowirz-Modlendorff said, it is obviow when reading these passages that Plato knew even more about weaving, materials to be woven, ways ofweaving, and so on, than what he says about it. He had fully mastered the ft"atures of this technical occupation. In 281d-e, however, there is a fourth incidental point, which-antici-pating Aristotle herc--distinguishcs the arcs of the proper cause fromchose of the composite or accompanying or comitant cause, as he puts it. (An Aristotelian digression apropos of this founh incidental point: theGreek word sumbainrin, an Ariscotelian word par excellence, signifies "rogo together." In Aristotle, the idea of sumbainrin, of rumbebikos, of thingsthat go together with other things, is all over the place. They can go to-gether by pure chance or they can go together with other things quite es-sentially but without appertaining to the definition, properly speaking. ofthe thing. Here's an example: The sum of the angles of n-ery triangle isequal to two right angles. Aristotle says, in an astonishing phrase: Thatsumbainei with the essence of the trWlgle; it is concomitant to it. h hap-pens that the fact chat the sum of the angles of every triangle is equal totwo right angles is the object of a rigorous mathematical proof. But char Smsi,wr ofF,lm,,,ry 19, 1986

is of little matter: it doesn't appcrta.in to t:hc essence of the triangle, which

is to be a pbnc figun: bounded by thcec straight lines. And in no way is ira question therein of what the sum of the three angles yields. Only, "ichappens that" doesn't mean thar ir's by pure chance: ir goes together. The problem for w comes from an unhappy translation of sumb,bikosby aaidmt in French, or its equivalent in other European languages.Akzidmr., for example, in German. For, scmancically speaking. in allLatin congu.cs the accident is obviously the accident of chance. Now, ifone keeps this unfortunate translation, young students of philosophy willhave to be subjected. to an intensive training, wherein they arc raid: Be-ware, accuknt in Aristotle has nothing to do with road traffic or with anyocher kind of accident; it can be something entirely essential. Thw, theheart doesn't enter into the definition of man, and it's by accident chatyou have, that we have, hearts. I have proposed, and I insist upon ic, thatone translate 11m1bainein and sumlHbiltos by comitam---which is the trans-lation of cumeo, comita,u, going together. One can then have essencialcomitants and accidental comitants. And this is the same word one finchagain, with a redundancy, and often a misspelling, in concomitant. lc'sspelled with one t, since in French it doesn't derive from mertrl' but fromthe participle of '"m.M.And concomitant variations arc variations that gotogether.) Incidental point number five is a very important one. It is made beforereturning to the definition and it concerns the measure of things. Therea.re, for Plato, relative measures and absolute measures, measures chathave their meaning only though comparisons and absolute measures,norms of things. A very strange idea, to which we shall return. Then comes the sixth incidental point, Plato's trickery about the trueobject of rhe dialogue: It isn't the statesman, about whom one more orless doesn't care, but dialectic, dialectical exercise (285d). The discussion'sbeen going on for a good while apropos of the statesman, OK, but chat'sonly a pretext; only dialectical gain interescs w. And yet one returns to weaving. In order to define iL Then, a return tothe cicy in order co dtfinc the pluralicy of the arts of lift in common inthe polis {2.87c-i.89C). Plato first enumerates the seven ans oflife in com-mon, thtn, as a third part of this definition, the auxiliary and subalternam (2.89--29Ia). And here appcan, in a detour, as if hitched onto the 291apassage, the most magician-like of all th< sophisu, the democratic politi-cian. Ir is then that the rwo other huge digrcssions come in:A. Digression cwo, on the forms of political regimes (291d-292.a), takenup again as digression ~o and a half between 300d and 303b, where Platosays that democracy is both the least good and the "lean bad" of regimes.B. Digression three, of capital importance, wedged in between the cwoparts of digression two, where he develops the idea that science alone isthe basis for the definition of the statesman. This third digression is ar·ticulatcd in five points:

1. 292 gives the basis for the definition;

2. in 293a-e, the absoluteness of the power of he who knows is affirmed; 3. then, in 294,a-c, there's the development about the essential defi- ciency of all written law; 4. the fourth poinr is the first navigation (294c-297d), where Plato reaffirms the absolute power of he who knows, whose mere appearance of its own right abrogates all laws; 5. finally, from 297d to 300c, there's the second navigacion, where it is said that in the genuine statesman's absence, one may content oneself with these deficient and inadequate regulations chat arc the wriuen laws.

And it is indeed in terms of chis second navigation and of what is said

there that, in digression two and a half, the theme of the forms, the ~s,of regimes can be taken up again, since here, contrary to what was the casein the Republic, the existence of a rights·bascd State [f'EUJ.t rk droitl or oneruled by laws (ou un EUJ.t rk lois] becomes a trait that enables one to dis·criminatc between regimes. The least corrupt regimes are chose that, evenrhough they arc nor governed by the statesman, have laws and obey chem,whether one is talking about monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy. Andthe most corrupt regimes arc chose in which there aren't even any laws. After digressions two, three, and two and a half, there's a return to thestatus of false statesmen, which had been dropped (303b-c), then some-thing on the auxiliary and elementary arts (303d-305d). The seventh in-cidental poinr concerns the arts that serve other arts. The existence of ahierarchy among the arrs is affirmed at 304b---d. Therefore, the definitionof the statesman as weaver is given again (305e). And we thought ourtroubles were over, but no: for, suddenly, one can very well ask oneself in s,,,,;,,,,, ofFtlmuzry 19, 1986 27

the end regarding this story about the statesman as weaver: A weaver,yeah, OK; but what docs he weave, this royal weaver? What arc the ma-rcrials he must blend together {mlkr), interlace. in order to perform hisjob? Now, of course, the first reference to the object of this weaving re-lates to these different ans, the seven principal ans and then the auxiliaryarts that arc indispensable for life in common. But here, all of a sudden,Plato, after an incidcnul point number eight about the diversity of thevirrucs (3o6a-308c), or at chc same rime as chis eighth incidental point,introduces a new objccr of weaving that has no relationship with the pre-ceding one. Whereas, until now, one might have understood-and itwouldn't be wrong-that the statesman is the royaJ weaver who weavestogether all the arcs necessary to chc life of the city, even if he doesn't somuch we.ive them personally but pcrmics, rather, the coexistence of thesedifferent arcs in the city, here we have something entirely different; wehave the faa that the human being's vinuc includes pans, that these partsarc diverse, chat rhr:y constitute a diversity, chat chr:y can even be opposedto e.ich ocher, in a ccnain fashion. Thar's a theme Plato had already moreor less sketched out in the &public: for example, if one is brave, andmerely brave, that can border on being opposed to a certain phronisis.One can be simply rccl<lcss, absurdly brave. And Aristotle took up thistheme later on in his theory of vinue. Being introduced here, therefore, is a new distinction, one that is psy-chologic.al in the senK that the term psychology has in Plato. The counter-part of ontology is psychology in its great dignity and with its grand di-mensions. Sraning from this, the statesman weaves together thesedifttrent parts of virrue, the psychical parts of virtue in individuals; andthw staning from then:, one returns anew to the statesman as someoneweaving together those aspects, those dimensions of virtue. And along theway, there really also is something that is like a kind of addition. Thestatesman doesn't simply weave cogetber the arcs and then the parts of thesoul; rather, he also weaves genetically che inhabitants of the city. He triesto ensure a blending [mi'4ng~] of the most daredevil families wich thefamilies that arc the most prudent, so that their descendants will display• blending of chcsc qualities due would be chc right blending, a.nd wear-rive finally at th< final definition (311b-c). l'U stop here. Nat rime, we'll attack che discussion of the rwo defini-tions, the eight incidental points, and the three digressions, in chat order. On Plato's ~tatcsman

Resumption and Anticipation

You will r<ull that I carved up this dialogue-I hope like a "good bucchcr," to use Plato's expression from the Phaedrus {165cj-into many parts. And more specifically, into two definitions, eight incidental points, and duce digressions, the second of these being able, moreover, also to be divided in rwo. I remind you that the first digression is that of the myth of Cronus (268e-1nc), that the second digression concerns the forms of regimes (291d-c), and that it is complemented by digression rwo and a half (.iood-303b), which is an evaluation of ,he bad regimes, of regimes that aren't the absolute regime. Finally, from 2.92.a to 3ooc, there's the third and most imponant digression, the one that justifies our speaking here of the Stausman, which contains the much calked-about thesis du.t it's sci- (. cnce alone that defines the statesman. Ir is explained in a first part, which ,, furnishes its basis; a second part dcmonsrratcs the absolute character of a , l,>olitical powc-r that would be groundc-d upon scic-ncc-; and a third part, fi- ~_{~ally, criticizes the- law on account of its c-ssential dc-ficic-ncy. This . is the much talked-about idea that the law n~c-r speaks but of the univer-)t , sal, whereas in reality one is always dealing with the singular. The conclu- L,'· ,_sion of all this is thw that if the- royal man, the political man, is the-re, ,,..t-veryching else must give way. The-re no longc-r arc any laws; the- law is· .rhe will of this royal man. Such is the result of what can be called the first0 ·navigation. '01.. ( r ('; '1"'./-"l -' OrJy, at the end of this fim n.avigationJPlato ~ys that all that isn't pos-10 Un Plato's :')utcsman

sible in the contexc of existing cities: There is no royal man; and if therewere one, the others weuldn'c recognize him. Consequently, a secondnavigation is required; one has to return to the problem as a whole, whichwill lead us to the discovery of the power of the law as lesser evil. The cicyruled by laws will therefore be second on rhe scale of values, but it willtake precedence over all the cities in which law is nor mistress. Thus, we have in chis third digression the two pivotal ideas that regu-late the movemenrs of Plato's choug}u at this stage in his evolution.Namely, first of all, the Plato of the theory of the Ideas, the "absolutist"....,,Plato-though nor only in the poliricaJ sense-the Plato who chinks thatthere is a genuine science of things in general and of human rhings in par-ticular, and that, by way of consequence, it is up to the trustee of this sci--...,:ence to settle, to regulate, to govern human things. And then there's theother aspect, which characterizes all the great dialogues of the finaJ pe-riod: a philosophy of the mixed, at the ontological and cosmological levelas well as at the anthropological and psychological level. Plaro is recog-niz.ing here that, by the very nature of things, there can be neither perfectknowledge nor perfect regulation of things chat are real, and that, by wayof consequence, one muse have recourse to a second series of measures, orprovisions-to this lesser evil that the law effectively is. Let us make a retrospective incidental point in order to underscore howextraordinary and ever-valid this part of the third digression, which con-cerns the law and its essential deficiency, rruly is. For, what Plato is for-mulating in chis passage for the first rime-the gap/between the universalrule and the particular reality-is, of course, a constituent element of thehuman world. This constituent element is a cleavage of its being. And it'sthis same observation that lacer bolstered Aristotle's reAection in theNichomachean Ethic!, the one on the much talked-about problem of eq-uiry (book 5). But above all, it's this observation rhat--<omrary to whatPlato himself thinks and what he wanrs--quite obviously and directlyleads, at a deeper level, to the abandonment of any idea of a perfect citydefined once and for all. There can be no law rhat embraces all aspects ofhuman activities once and for all. For, the gap between the law and real-ity isn't accidental; it's essential. And if you draw the conclusions that follow from this idea-which,once again, immediately and massively imposes itself on you-you seeright away that it implicitly comains a condemnation of Plato's prior at-tempts in the Republic, as well as of the subsequent arrempt of the laws. s,,,.;,.,,, ofF<lmutry 26, 1986 JI

In the LAws, it is trut:, there arc a few provisions for revising the laws fromtime to rime. But they're very weak. marginal, an~ essential aim of th~l.AwJ is, there ag.ain, to frcczc history, t4?.-irc~ th~ in,JQ!JJ(igq_ o_Lajcty. And h<yond Plato's critique-which~aft~ all.is ~ativdy ~n~ toour inrcrc:su--you end up, of COW'SC, with a radical and entirely justifiedcondemnation of every utopia, that is to say, of every attempt to ddineand fix in place the perfect society. There can be no such definitions. Andwe should already have known this since the Staumui,r. No rcguJarionwill ever be able to gee a tight grip upon the pcrpctua.l alteration of socialand historical reality. Ar the very most, such a regulation can try to killchis alteration. ~uc then, _in killing it, it kills the social-historical; it killsits subject and° its object'. /By way of consequence, if we arc seeking theway toward a btttcr constitution, we cannot want to fix this constitutionin place; rather, we have to aim at finding the constitution rhat each rimebest allows self-altering social-historic.al reality to give icsclf the legislationthat corresponds to it. That is to say, adopting my terminology: We canaim only at changing the relationship bccwccn the instituting society andthe instituted society. We can therefore want only a society that once andfor all condemns the reign of the insciruccd. and seeks the correct rela-tionship, the just relationship between the instituting and the instituted.We have to aim for a Constitution of society that would permit societyitself to fulfill this role, which even the royal man, if ever he were to exist2nd to be accepted by all the citiuns, would never be able to fulfill, thatof the correct government, therefore of self-government at all echelons. I offer here and now these anticipations of what is to come. I do so be-cause, if we don't have in sight this central kernel of the dialogue-thepositions developed there and the problematic to which they give birth-we cannot understand the genuine stakes that arc there during the dis-cussion of the two definitions. This discussion I therefore now und.cnakc.

III. The Two Definitions

And the first observation co be made, here again at the outset, is thatthcsc two definitions an, perfectly superfluous. They a,e useless; theyserve no purpose; they teach w noch.ing. They aren't what Plato is in-tending; that's not what interests him. Not becawc, a5 he s.iys elsewhere,what intcrc:scs him would be the cumplification of the diaJcaic, dialecti-cal acrciK. No, chat's a misleading confession [,m awu trompn,r), fo,32 On PLttof Statesman

what interests him is another definition of the statesman, which is not

stated in the two definitions but is implicitly contained in the third ma-jor digression: The statesman is the tpiJtimiJn, he who knows, and he whoknows what each is to do because he possesses true knowledge. And hisextraordinary ca.sk---once a~in, I'm anticipating what is to come--is toprescribe for e.ach~ach individual who participates in society, each cici-zcn-m follow what is the just thing co do and not do (:z.95a-b). Theterm used by Plato is extraordinarily strong; it's pro1tatttin, to order, coprescribe. And elsewhere, further on, he says: ro order paraJ.._~thimmo1,while being seated beside him, while being at his bed.side, at his side so asto tell him at each instant: "Now, you get married, now you buy leeks, now you fire your servants," and so on and so forth. Herc I'm talking in banalities. Bur Plato has taught w, with his mudi talked-about story of the lice in the P1trmmuks, not to neglect these: everywhere and always, the royal man has co prescribe to each what he is to do. And you sec what this means, both as a crazily impossible thought and as a denial of the capacity of the individuals who make up society to run their own lives [sedirigt'T]. And not to stray too far from our contemporary reality, we may ob- serve, moreover, that in modern rimes there have been attempts to realize this idea of prescribing what each individual is to do and not do ac each instant-not under the form of the royal man bur through the whole to- talitarian tendency of bureaucratic regulation. This is evident at the point of production, in the f.r.crory, where in principle everything the exccutant, the worker-and even an upper-level cxccucanr-is to do is supposed to be defined, down to the tiniest derails, so char the person to whom the regulation is addressed is present in this regulation only as a pure physical principle setting things into morion. Every managerial feature [ Tout ltk- ment de direction}, the entire meaning of his act is snatched away from him in order for it to be deposited in rhc bureaucratic regulation of pro-duction--or in the bureaucratic regulation of the very life of the citizen, in the case of a totalitarian regime. He then is no longer anyone bur theone who moves his hand so that, at the moment set for him, the pan maybe prcscnced to the machine, then removed: or else, he is no longer any-one but the one who applauds when the leader utters the term that calls,f~plawe and who jeers when this same leader utters the terms chatherald jeers. One must therefore have it in one's head that this rhird de6nicion of___, Jl

the statesman is what Plato is intending when the fim nvo definitions aredi.scus,cd. When you bear that in mind, you will be convinced of theirsuperftuousnes5--and, in a way, of their poindessncss, if one takes themfor their own sake. But this will also help to underscore for you the exis-tence of rhe aporia created by the second navigation, both in relation rothis definition-which according to Plato, in his hean of hearts, is thetrue onc----and in relation to the rwo definitions explicitly seated, espe-cially the sccond one. For, you ask youndf what this statesman, this royalman, th.is weaver really is doing in a city where there arc laws like the onesPlato ultimately aocepts at the end of the second navigation.

Fint Definition: Th, S"'raman as Pastor ofHunwn Floclts

Following a shon preamble, the explanation of this first definitioncommcncn. This ddinicion claims to be in a sense a true, a direct, and not an analogical definition, whereas in the second dc6.nirion~f thestatesman as weaver in the city-weaving is explicitly posited a.s an aruJl-ogon, as a paradigm, as another case sufficiently akin, according to theessence of things, to the an of the statesman char one might be able to use it in order to understand what the statesman docs. The definition of the pa.nor isn't given as analogic.al but as a genuine definition: an attempt is made to insen the Statesman into an exhaustive series of divisions, that is co say, of definitions of species and of specific differences, as Aristotle waslater to say in his theory of definition in the ANZ/ytics. And the idea of chepastor, in this pan running from 258b to 267c, is apparently caken sui-ou.sly. Ar lea.st, one affcccs to take it seriously, as one affects to take seri-ouslv the successive divisions, at the end of which an attempt will bemade ro get a right grip upon the statesman. A5 you will remember, one begins with the sciences. Some of these arctheoretical, others aren't. Among the theoretical ones, chc directive andself-directive ones arc distinguished. The raising of animals bcJongsamong these sdf-dircctivc sciences. Therein, there arc animals that live inAock.s, and chu arc came, and that walk instead of 8y, that don't inter-breed (unlik,, for example, horses, mules, donkeys, ere.). And, finally, wearrive at men. Statesmanship is then the science that nnnei, chac tendsand pastures, chat nourishes, that attends to the life of human beings liv-ing in common; it's chc science whose object is the raising of men incommon. 34 On Plato's Statesman

Even if it isn't of m~mportans~J~r's m~ a first rcm~rk in order to

underscore right away Plato's rhetorical dishonesty. For, stamng from 258e, there is what could 5c called a change in the basis for the division, some- thing that isn't permitted in logic. At the outset, the dividing was done according co the form of activities, according to what is incrinsic to these activities; sciences/ nonsciences, theoretical sciences/practical sciences, di- rective sciences/ executive sciences, 1 and so on. And then, starting at acer- tain moment, the criterion changes and rhe dividing is done according to the matter of the object and no longer according to the form and the meaning of the activity. This is a remark of technical, secondary impor- ,Jance, no doubt, but it is one rhac allows us, here agajn, to underscore how/ much Plato is often more: of a sophist than his Sophist adversaries. In the: second place, all the divisions the: Stranger performs are till the end basically dichotomous. But-as Plato himself points out later on, without being entirely comfortable with this observation-there: is no in- trinsic reason for these divisions to be dichotomous, for one always to be dividing in rwo. Of course, there's a formal reason: division in rwo corre- sponds to al non-a, p is true/ p is not true. One can therefore always di- vide any set whatsoever by picking out a property and by regrouping the objects that have it and those that don't have it. Therefore, one can always operate by dichotomy. Bur that doesn't mean that this dichotomy is per- tinent, that it corresponds to something real in what one is dividing. And here we have one of the problems of formal logic qua binary logic. One would think chat the binary character of this logic-yes/no; true/not true; a/non-a-its exhaustion of every universe of discourse via contra- dictories, should have lc:d to some sore of postulace about a binary struc- ture of what is (which is srill there:, more or less, in contemporary physics). Now, chat isn't possible. But we shall talk about it again when we discuss the species/ part question in the 6rst incidencal point. I would like to pause here over rwo paitio principii Plato imposes upon us. He imposes them upon us so skillfully, so "in passing," rhat most commentators don't even flinch. Such is the strength of the hold of the Platonic text, as well as of ideology. The first one, which appears very early on, involves the identification statesman "' royal man. At no point is this identification discussed; it is posited as going without saying. And yet this is unheard of, monstrous, for Greeks especially and for Athenians in particular. lo the age when Plato was writing, there was no king in Greece. Ar Sparta, there were in- Seminar of F,brw,ry 26, 1986 JS

deed two "kings," but they had no power; rruc power was shared betweenthe cphors and the gerousia. In addition, while there were some cyrancs in~icily, unless I'm mistaken they didn't get themselves caJlcd king. Diony-sius, for example. Or if they did, other Greeks looked down upon them asupsta.ns [pan.imw]. Of course, there were kings in Macedonia, but Mace-donia had a very bizarre status: a few years after chc Statesman, when Demosthenes was trying to mobiliz.e the Athenians co fight Philip, he ex- horted chem not to .. let themselves be subjugated by barbarians." Well, the Macedonians spoke in a Greek idiom, but they didn't truly belong cowhat the cities considered co be the Greek world-precisely, among other reasons, because they had kings and Macedonia didn't consist of cities. Fi- nally, when one spoke in Greece during the fifi:h and fourth centuries of the "king," that noun designated only one, very specific character-"the Grear King," the king of the Persians, who was the incarnation of des- potism. And yet Plato quite coolly identifies the statesman with the royal man, which for Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries, and in any case at Athens, was pretty much a monscrosiry. A second petitio principii, but of much greater import, is the following: as early a.s 258b, we are told chat the statesman is tOn epistimonOn tis, "one of those who possesses a science." This will be confirmed by the third di- gression. Bue who says so? And with what arguments? It could very well be said that statesmanship is an empirical form of know-how [Javofr-foire]. And chat's what should be said, moreover. By empirical I don't mean a bonesetter's art, but, well, it's something that cannot under anyheading be called a science. Yet the Stranger says chat the statesman is tOnrpiJtimonOn tiJ, one among the scientists [/.r.J Javanu]-bur the knowersof a certain knowledge [kJ" JavantJ d'un Javoir certain]. "How could it notbe?" answers Young Socrates. And off we go. Statesmanship is a science;and the statesman is he who possesses this science. This fa11aciow subsumption of che statesman under science is going toallow Plato to make the rest of his argument. The French translator Au-guste DiCs translates tOn epiJtimonOn tiJ, very badly, as "[belonging to]people who know." Bue epiJtimonOn doesn't refer to the people whoknow: the politician isn't someone who knows that the era.ins for Brinanyleave from the Montparnasse train station; he's someone who possesses acertain knowledge about an important object, a knowledge whose prin-ciples are grounded. Plato wouldn't call a cobbler ep,Stimouim. And in chisdialogue-as elsewhere, moreover-Plato u~es techni and f'pi.Jtbn( with- On P/au,j Statesman

out distinction-the two terms being nearly indistinguishable all the wayfrom Homer to Aristotle. Later, Aristotle made a discinction between thetwo but wirhout--always sticking ro it. And above all, when he did makehis distinction, he placed uchni and tpiJtimi on one side and phronisis onthe other. Phronisis, coo, was later very badly translated into Latin, as pru-dmtia, whereas it is something that should belong, rather, to what Kantlater called the "faculty of judgment," while at the same exceeding the lat-ter, since the Kantian faculty of judgment, or, more generally, of ordinarylogic is the capacity to recognize that a case falls under a rule. It is a pri-mordial and irreducible capacity because, if you had a rule that told youthat this case falls under that rule, the "chis case falls under that rule"would again be a case that would have to be subsumed under the rule that says "chis case falls under that rule." There again, therefore, you'd need a faculty of judgment. Thw, you ha'Ve an in6nite regression. It's im- possible to break down this faculty into component parts {dicomposrr cm, facultl-lii]. But phronisis isn't only that. Beyond this somewhat mechanical side of the faculty of judgment is also something chat is inde6nable a priori: it's the capacity to recognize each time what is pertinent and what isn't. So, if you remain on the mechanical side of the faculty of judgment and if you grant what in logic is called Church's theorem-if it's logical, it's formal- izable and mechanizable-recognizing what's pertinent and not pertinent would mean sending in a computer to work out all the possible cases and end up, statistically speaking, halfway, saying: Yes, this is pertinent. But that's not what we call phronisis. Judging a situation isn't going over bil- lions of possible cases and saying: That one is the pertinent case. No, it's going directly to the decision: This is pertinent, that's not pertinent. And this c.tpacity is also irreducible, even if it is liable to gradations and differs among adult individuals: some have a lot of it; others have it less. Bue I certainly don't want to say by that that it's genetic. So, if statesmanship appertains to something from this point of view, it obviously isn't to uchni I tpistimi but quire obviously to all that bringsphronisis into play, that is to say, the faculty of judging and of orienting one.self (another Kantian term, moreover)-for, in the end, that's what separating the pertinent from the nonpcrtinent is-in relation to human affairs, to the real things in society. I have insisted upon this point. That's because, once again, this falla-cious, unexplained subsumpcion of the statesman under tpi.Jtimi later be- Smrinar ofFebruary 26, 1986 37

comes, of course, the explicit axiom of the third digression, the one aboutthe absoluteness of the statesman and of his power. Ur's return to the text of the first definition. At the end of the series ofdivisions-dichotomies, statesmanship is defined as rhc science whose ob-ject is rhe raising of men in common. And there commence the criticismsof this definition. There arc three criticisms, in fact. First of all, the firstcriticism (267c--c) says that chis definition can't be right becawe there areother arts that attend to the nourishing and raising of human beings: thewee-nurse [la nou"ict], for example, or dsc the doctor, thc restaurateur,ind so on. A second objection appears in 268a-c: The statesman cannotbe a true pastor because the genuine pastor attends to everything thatconcerns his flock: he feeds [nourrit) it; he arranges crossbreedings, thebeasts' nuptials; he cares for them when they arc sick; he helps them givebirch; he plays music on his flute for them, and so forth. Now, the states- man doesn't do all that. These rwo criticisms arc, moreover, as you cansee, quite complementary, if not two sides of the same coin. Finally, in a third criticism-which comes after the first digression, che myth of the reign of Cronus, as an apparent justification for rhis long detour-theStranger convinces Young Socrates that between the pastor and the flock cherc is always a difference in nature. It isn't a cow chat leads the othercows; it's a human being. And it isn't a sheep that leads the other sheep; it's the shepherd. Therefore, if there were a shepherd of humans, hewould have to be of another nature than human beings. He would have to be the divine pastor spoken of in the myth of Cronus. And if therehave been such divine pastors, they belong to another cycle of the world,the reverse cycle, the cycle defined by the reign of Cronus. The matter therefore seems settled. These three objections Plato makesto himself radically and completely cancel out his first definition. Yet-and here again the strange goings-on in the structure of rhe Statesman in-tervene-the first definition is taken up again, rcshuffied, from 275c to276c. The first criticism is answered by saying that the statesman isn't anurturer [nou"icier] of men, isn't a true pastor, but simply a caretaker[soigneur] (the Greek ccrm is therapeutis, he who rakes care of {prmd soinde], a lirrlc like a boxing trainer [soigntur de boxe]); and he is a humancaretaker, as opposed co divine pastor; finally, he is a benevolent and vol-untary (heltousios) caretaker, as opposed. to the violent (biaios) caretakerwho would be the tyrant. So, in 176c, we arc again given a son of defini-tion of rhc political or royal art, which is the an th.i.t takes care voluntar-,s 011 Platoi Statesman

ily, and with the consent of those of whom this art takes care, with theconsent of human.communities: "'We shall call statesmanship the freelyoffered and freely accep,cd care cha< i., exercised over a herd [1n>upe11u] ofbipeds; and he who exercises this care is a uuc king and a true statesman"!176el. And chen, a dramacic turn of evenu [coup tk thldlW]: che Stranger de-clares that this definition won't do, that it isn't good, that it is entirely ex-ternal, that it doesn't grasp the essence of the thing. He declares in addi-tion that another method must therefore be adopted (177a--c). And it ishere that he introduces his considerations about the paradigm-whichwill furnish us with the objccc of the fourth incidental point, to be dis- cussed later. He doesn't give any reason for abandoning this definition; hedoesn't rake up again any of the three preceding objections. He simplylets it drop by making a declaration-to which Young Socrates, as onemight expea, subscribes right away-and he embarks upon some entirelydifferent considerations. Herc's the exchange (277a):

YOUNG SOCRATES: We very likely, Stranger, may have dtus finished our demonstration as concerns die statesman. STRANGER: That would be a great success, Socrates, but it isn'r enough that you have dtis conviction; wc both mwt have it. Now, in my opinion the skcrch of the king is not yet finished. On the contrary, like sculptors who leave their work unfinished, wc have left it unfinished. (In bringing up the myth,] we have shaptd iu outer lines, bur there is no relief to it.

Fine, but chose arc all jwt words. No clear reason is given for aban-doning the definition of the pastor. And yet it is abandoned. One couldhave sroppcd at this definition: the statesman is the caretaker-trainer (notthe pastor-nunurcr), the human (not divine) and voluntary and consen-sual (not violent) caretaker of human communities. Ar. that point, an ad-ditional question would, quice logically, be raised: In wha, way would chi.,caretaker differ from other caretakers of human beings? That would leadus directly to the considerations at the end about the different arts in thecity, ro everything that serves at once to subtend, to swtain, and to illw-trate the second definition. And we would at that moment perhaps be ledm say char there arc caretakers of parts and that what is needed is some-thing like a caretaker of the whole or of the rorality. Thar's what we sayand don't say with the weaver, bct:ausc the definition of the statesman asweaver says this thing, but says it, as we shall sec, in a very bizarre fashion Snnin4r •fF,b=ry 26, r986 39

and without anacking the problem of the caretaker of the whole head-on,and still less, moreover, that of the legislator, bur I shall come to rhar. On the other hand, if this fim definition really had to be abandoned,why spend all that time with those stories of beasts that walk, beasts thatAy, beasts that have or don't have horns, beasts that can or cannot im-pregnate one another? And left aside is the obviously csscmial thing, ofwhich no Athenian was unaware: the constitution of the city as a whole.Plato himself knew chis as early on as the Protagoras, even if he puts it inthe mouth of Protagoras: Besides and beyond and through and above allthe particular ans that are necessary to the existence of the city, there isanother capacity char intends the ltatholou, the totality, the whole of the ~·s affairs. And chis capacity, which Protagoras says is shared equally Jong aU citizens (by which Plato means that it doesn't belong to a sin- : individual ot to rare and exceptional individuals), is defined by an ob- :t thac is rhe polis as such-an idea that would be par excellence Pla- nic. The human being whose object is this polis as such would be the ~ atesman. Only, there's no question here of all that. We are therefore led to ask ourselves: Why this first definition? What's H doing in there? And, as for myself, I think it really has to be recognized chat we have here a curiow reversal [inversion] going on: the myth of the reign of Cronus is introduced in order to allow the first definition to be,eliminated-but to be eliminated not in logic but in the rhetoric of the text. I insist upon this point because, in the logic of the text, it would suf- fice to say: There are pastors, who are of anocher nature than the animals they tend and pasture. If there were a pastor of humans, he could only besuperhuman. OK. So, the statesman isn't a pastor. But there are activities that take care of human communities, and the statesman appertains to thJ.t group of activities. He's a caretaker; he's not a pastor. But instead ofthat, we go through the long detour of the myth of the reign of Cronus inorder to eliminate the consequences of the logical approach of the firstdefinition rhetorically. And it's abandoned. Moreover, it doesn't interestw. Ir's perfectly trivial. True, it belongs to the stock of Greek folk.1ore (andwithout a doubt, also to a much larger stock of folk.1ore): the king as pas-tor of men. Without going back co Homer, it's found in Xenophon, in hisCyropaedia, and especially, in the popular mind [la rtprbentation com-mune, la reprbentation populaire]. And it perhaps wasn't worth the troubleof mobilizing so much dialogue in order to diminate it. We are therefore obliged to come to the opposite [inwr.re] conclusion: On Pla1o's Statesman

it isn't the myth that is introduced in order to be able to eliminate the firstdefinifibn; it's the firn definition that is proposed falsely, rhetorically, inorder to be able tO introduce the myth. The point [ftnatitl) of the firstdefinition concerning the pastor was to prepare che following idea: Therewere pastors of human beings, bur they were gods. And that took place atthe time of Cronus's reign. Plato can then incroduce this extraordinaryfiction of a world that sometimes turns in one direction, sometimes in theother, with the reversal of the direction of all movemencs and the mysteryof the reversal itself of the direction of time during these perio~. Butwe'll talk again later about chat in more detail.

Second Definition: The Stausman, thr Ruyal Man, as Wrawr

We pass therefore to the second definition. And. of course, it can be

noted incidentally-and this has already been noted-that the dialogueitself is a weaving: Plato himself is the weaver who weaves together allthese extremely heterodite, different, even bizarrely assoned and multi-colored [bariolis] elements in order to compose a tapestry that neverthe-less holds together. It holds together, however, in quite a strange manner. For, this seconddefinition-for the very reasons I just mentioned-appears to be intro-duced in an entirely artificial way. First of all, because, once again, thefirst definition is dropped on the basis of a decision that is entirely un-motivated. But above all, because the way in which the Stranger, after hisincidental point about paradigms, introduces the story about weaving in279a-b is perhaps one of the most arbitrary passages in world literature.h's a tot.ti jump from one thing to another (un coq-4-/'iin~ total): We needa paradigm. Right, says the other guy. How about weaving? the Strangersuggests. 'Why not? says Young Socrates compliantly. (The latter, let it besaid parenthetically, is always saying: Right, yes, certainly.... Except,that is, at one point, which, for this reason, takes on a value of its own.And that happens when the Stranger, during the third digression, saysthat the true statesman reigns with laws, without laws, with grammata,withour grammata, by killing, by not killing. The true statesman doeswhat he wanes. So, there, the young Socrates rebels, and his revolt takeson more plausibility and weight in light of his perpetual consent.) Weav·ing, then. But why weaving rather than architecture, prosody, musicalcomposition, and so on and so fonh? It's totaUy arbitrary. S.minar of Ftbrua,y 26, 1986

T~is long s~o~ about w~ving nevcnhclcss begins, is interrupt~ by di-

gressions and madencal pomcs, and runs, in faa, from 279b unti~e endof the dialogue. What happens during this whole discussion? Well, somevery strange things happen. First, the Stranger begins by discussing weav-ing as such. For, if one wants to use it as a paradigm, one must knowwhat it is, of what it consists. But it also muse be classed among humanactivities. And here, in passing, just like that, Placo offers us an extraordi-nary and remarkable universal division of human activities. I'm not goingrn talk about it, but I recommend that you reread 279c---c: all we create,mmufacture [fobnquom), md acquire is organized there, divided up. The French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE)didn'c cake this passage into account in its classification of socioprofes-sional activities (preferring, rather, Boutdieu), but there is indeed a basis for division here: all we can do or acquire is because of this or because of that; in order to do something or in order nor to undergo something; andwhat is done in order not to undergo something is divided inro enclo-sures and armor of war, and so on. Herc-as for the divisions that con-cerned the pastor-we have a sort of dichotomous inspection and reviewof the totality of human activities. After that, there arc incidental points four, five, and six, about propercauses and comicant causes; rdative measures and the absolute measure-with, right in the middle (this is the sixth incidental point), the followingdisarming affirmacion chat is made at chat moment: The genuine objectof the dialogue is obviously not the statesman, about whom one couldn'tgive a damn; it's learning to discuss and to divide; it's dialectical exercise.I already calkcd about this the lase time, and I believe I've shown you thatchis is just an affectation, a false claim, and char in reality, at a third level'-it really is the scarcsman who is the object of the Statesman, Then, after having "boringly held forth" {cf. 286b} on weaving as such,on the thread, on the woof, we henceforth know what weaving is, how itis done, what is involved therein. And one can pass on to its applicationby "transferring onto the statesman's art, in order co know it well, the ex-ample of this art of weaving we previously expounded" {cf. 2.87bt. Weav-ing is going to serve as a paradigm; chc statesman is a sort of weaver.That's what the Stranger says in 2.85d-e. But then the question immedi-ately arises: If the statesman is a weaver, whar docs he weave? This isbroached a bit, tangentially but not really, in 287a--d: it isn'r being saidchat one mwt find what it is he weaves, bur some elements of the life of On Plato's Statesman

the city are introduced about which it can reasonably be thought that the statesman is the weaver thereof. And those elemems are all the ans neces- sary co the life or"the city. The discussion is then going to cake the form of a division of the arts that are practiced in the city. A laborious, very mud- dled division-and I say this without any polemical intention in mind, without any acrimony or animosity. Plato acknowledges this himself: "It's difficult, the work we are undertaking to carry out" i287dj. Herc, one is truly in the material, in the empirical world, where nothing can be o:- hauscively divided. And then it is very difficult to know what, in human activities, is an instrument, and an instrument of what, for performing a univocal classification. This thought, moreover, is quite correct, and it is pregnant with other ideas Placo doesn't develop. Bue in the end he speaks of seven ans. It isn't really clear what the 6rst of these seven ans is, but the ochers are known. When Plato enumerates them, he speaks of the 6rsc, then of the other six (289a-b): "We have the primitive species, then we have instruments, vessels, vehicles, shelter, diversions, and nourishments."' That's it for the objects of the six possible arts, plw a 6rst art that is not given-that is perhaps the arc of manufacturing the instruments of the other ones, although that isn't said. And this enumeration precedes a sec- ond distinction between the arts that intend the thing itself and the arcs chat are auxiliary and subaltern arts, which is discussed between 289c and 291a. An incidental remark. In chis encire passage Aoats an interrogation, an implicit one. For those who have read Plato (the &public and ocher texts) before, it is there between the lines: W'h.ich unong these arts are truly,;necessary to the life of the ciry, and which are not? This matter can be taken up from the somewhat childish, normative, moralizing sundpoint of the "old philosophy"-that of Plato, too, in the Gorgias and even in the Republic-according to which what the city needs is agriculrure, the raising of livestock, perhaps some metalworking, but cenainly not the an of che chef or of the perfumer. But chat's not the point of view being adopted here; all the ans, induding chose chat serve simply to amwe, are considered co be necessary parts of the city-this is the relative human- izafion of Plato about which we have spoken. And the question Plato is pasing implicitly-What are the truly productive activities, and which/are nof productive?-was larer taken up again by Aristotle and then ta.rose in che middle of che eighreenth ccnrury. For rhe Physiocrats, for example, the sole truly productive activities Smzinar ofFtbrwry 26, 1986 4J

were the primary ones, that is to say, agriculture and all those activitiesthat extract something dirccdy from nature (mines, quarries, and so on).For them, indwtry wasn't productive; it didn't add any value. By way 0(contrast, in rhc grand tradition of English political economy, AdamSmith, and so on, all activities having to do with a material object areproductive, provided char these activities transform that object. There-fore, primary indwtries (agriculture, extraction, and so forth), of course,as well as manufacture, are productive. Smith very clearly made the dis-tinction, saying in substance: "No doubt the existence of our king, or ofour poets, or of our artists, or of our judges is even more essential to thenation than the existence of peasants and manufacturers. Nonetheless, asprecious as those activities might be, we cannot think that they increasethe national wealth." And he was excluding thereby everything we wouldcall servic~s so as co retain only that which has co do with the manufactureand cransformacion of material objects . .::}larx's theory of value basically relies upon this distinction, too. And it is chis same distinction that still today {in 1986} serves to contra.st Westernsystems of national accounting from Russian and "socialist" systems of national accounting. For, in Western systems of national accounting, allthe activities that are performed or that could be performed for pay-andthat are legal; it's curious, but that's how it is-appertain to the nationalincome. This rules out, for example, the truly clandestine and illegal ac-tivities of the Mafia, but it leaves a problem with respect to casinos andprostitution to the extent char these aren't illegal activities: Do they or dothey not increase national income? But in che Eastern-bloc countries, theallegedly orthodox Marxist definition includes in national income onlychose activities that produce material things or transform them. There's Vsomething very Aristotelian about this, a notion of substance and of itsattributes. For, among the essential attributes of substance, there isluisthai, being-in-a-certain-place; hence transportation, which modifiesan attribute of the thing~its place-app~rcains •. a~~or~ing to "Soviet"\..'.national accounting pracnces, to productive acuvmes. Bue not com-merce, which in no way alters the Aristotelian categories of the thing.Obviously, Mr. Gorbachev hardly knows who Arisrocle was, but that's notthe issue; his national accounting works according to those cacegoric::s~ This problematic also underlies the distinction the Statesman makesbetween the different species of arts, the ptin..:ipal <uts and the auxiliaryarts. che manufacture of instruments, the thin~s used by tht: instruments. On Platoj Statesman

In any asc, this long discussion can only leave us with the impressionthat what the royal waaver is to weave together is precisely all those activ-ities, the arts that form the city. Then there is, in passing, an attack on another art that had not previ-ously been distinguished, that of the sophist-magician, as he says-that isto say, of the statesman who is not che statesman as Plato defines him bur,in fact, the democratic statesman. And it is at chis place in the dialoguechat the long digressions on the form of regimes and on science as thestatesman's sole foundation come in. There's a rerwn to the Sophist, thatis to say, to the democratic statesman, in 303b-c, so as to eliminate him asfalse statesman, which doesn't interest us. Then auxiliary statesmanshiparts of mother type-strategy, rhetoric, and the art of the judge, for ex-ample-arc introduced. But they couldn't be statesmanship itself, becawethey arc subordinated to it. Aristotle, moreover, took up this idea againlater on, at the beginning of the Nichomachtan Ethia, when he says chat politics is the most architectonic art {1094327}. And in 305c, it may be thought that our troubles arc over. All the fakeshave been eliminated, all the auxiliaries have been subordinated, and theStranger concludes:

As to chis activicy chat commands all the others, that is concerned wich the laws and with all che affairs of the poliJ and that unites all chcse chings in a fabric in che most perfect way possible, we shall be right, it s«:ms to me, co choose for it a rachcr simple name for the universality of its func- tion, and we shouJd call it Jtatmna,uhip. YOUNG SOCRATES; Absolutely; I agrtt: completely.

Ir might therefore be thought that we. have found the elements chat thestatesman weaves together, that chcy arc these various arts, and that thedefinition of the statesman has been found. But no, not at all. For, nowthe Stranger undertakes an initiative chat is unrelated to what has pre-ceded. And as if nothing had been said before, or as if everything char hasbeen said had nothing to do with the weaving materials the royal manweaves, he launches into the following:

-Since we have spoken of weaving, we must now determine what things

are woven and in what way, in order for w to produce the bbric states- manship weaves. -Evidendy, says Young Socr:ncs {cf. 3o6al. Smiinar ofFtbruary 26, 198/f 45

There's a new twist in the plot, therefore, and we start again-but nowfor the last time-with an entirely new idea, the idea of the parts ofvirtue. There are pans to virtue, which differ according co their species,according to their ~idos. And a variety of examples are gone through. Indoing so, Plato is abandoning-this is very important, and it's undoubt-edly also the deep-seated reason for chis new rwisc-his cardinal doctrineconcerning virtue, namely, that vinue is in face cssencially one and that inany case it has a unitary relationship to knowledge; and chat, withoutknowledge, there is no virtue. At this spot in the Statesman, we have arather differcnc conception: there are pares to virtue, and these parts areopposed. Bravery, for example, is opposed to prudence. And the fact thatthere might be different virrucs can have very deleterious effects upon checity, some pushing too far toward war and the ochers too far towardpeace. We therefore arrive, on account of this, at a sort of new definitionin 308e-309e, which concerns the capacity to put these virtues together[composer msmibk as vt'rtUJ]. Then it is discovered in 309 that these dif-ferent virtues have, so to speak, bioanrhropological embodiments, that isco say, that there are indeed men who possess sometimes more of one,sometimes more of the other; that, therefore, che arr of che royalweaver-who becomes a species of pastor again here without it beingsaid, or a gardener who crosses good lines in order to obtain che results herequires (qui/ Lui faut]-is co cross the appropriate lines in the city in or-der that there might nor be too much recklessness or too much circum-spection. And thw there suddenly reappears the absolutism of the gen-uine political man [vlritabk homme politique] who, in order co fir [ajuster]together the different lines, muse have the right to expel from the city orto put ro death chose who don't correspond to the good materials fromwhich the city is to be woven and to educate the ochers. And this culmi-nates finally in 311c with che following definition:

Let us say then char here is achieved in straight weaving the stuff that po- licical activiry interweaves when, taking the human characters of energy and temperance, the royal science assembles and unites their two lives through conc.ord and friendship and, thus producing the most excellent and most magnificent of all fabrics, envelops therein, in each ciry, all the people, slaves and free men, draws them together in its weft and, assuring the ciry, without lack or failing, all the happiness it [the city] can enjoy, it commands and directs .. On Plato's Statesman

This is in truth a quite strange definition, if one kc:cps in mind what,

along the way, the third digression has taught us: chat it is the laws chat, in the end, are to dir'Cct ~erything in human a.ffa.frs. Cenainly, there's this "command and direct," but that doesn't tell us much once the cask of the statesman is limited to making che reckless temperament and the cir- cumspect temperament coexist harmoniously, the one tempering the other. This obviowly involves a fantastic shrinkage. In other words, this paradigm of weaving, of the elements to Ix woven, is used in three ways that are neither congruent nor convergent: 1. There arc the different arcs char are necessary for the life of the city, and it is presumed that the statesman must know how to combine them not in himself but in the existence of the city. 2.. There are auxiliary quasi political arts, like scrategy and rhetoric, and the statesman muse know how to subordinate them and cell them what they have to execute. 3. Finally, there are differem components of virtue and human tem- peraments, our of which the statesman has to know how to make a har- monious blend (chis third case being, moreover, something from an en- tirely different level than the preceding ones).

I'd like to conclude on the basic quescion this ultimate definition (in- deed, both definitions) raises for w in its coexistence with what the sec- ond navigation teaches us. If there cannot be an absolute royal man with his absolute power, if one mwt therefore be satisfied wirh a city of laws, what can the statesman or the royal man, whether he be pastor or weaver, do rherein? W'har is his place in a city where the laws, in the main, say what is to be done? Let's rake up the question at a very radical level: here we have a city in which, suddenly, the royal man appears; so, according to the truly true discourse-the absolute discourse, the discourse of the third digression-the existing laws cease to be de jurc, cease to be just, cease to have legitimacy. The royal man imposes, at that moment, what is right, what is just. And quire obviously, his task, his activity, cannot be defined as a simple weaving of the elements he finds in the city. At chat moment, this royal man-whose emergence brings about the collapse of the existing legislation, the existing institution of sociecy--crcates a tab-/ µla rasa through his very appearance. This is a son of institutional and political earthquake. The whole edifice crumbles; and he must recon- Sm,;.,,, ofFtbru4ry J6, 1986 47

struct the city, radically reinstitute it. And that goes much further than¥IY comparison with any son of weaving. h's incommensurable. He~doesn't weave anything; he constitutes. To say that he weaves is to forgetthe deep-seared relationship--which Plato knows very wdl; he ta1k.sabout it at length both in the &public and in the Laws-between the in-stitution of the city and the composition of the human elements that arefound therein. One can't rake individuals as dcmcncs char arc indcpcnd-enc of the city; individuals are made by the paideia of the cicy-what Imyself call the social fabrication ofth, individual. And this extends frommarriage to the permissible musical modes, passing by way of the educa-tion of children. Therefore, if he's a royal man and if the laws subside, allthe laws subside----cvcn musical laws. And I'm not kidding here: the wordnomos, in Greek, also means the types of melodies, of scales (the Doriannomos, che Lydian nomos, and so on). And regarding precisely thesenomoi, Plato declares in the Republic chat some of chem have to be for-bidden because, being too lascivious, they corrupt morals. Therefore, if the royal man appears, the law as such subsides, and thestatesman has to radically institute everything. There can be no questionfor him of weaving. Or else there is no royal man. The law then remains"secondly just,., and what is already given needs only to be woven to-gether. But in both fashions, the statesman appears to be missing his goal. One can then try to save the situ.2tion by saying that the royal weaverto which we are led at the end of che Statesman is not the true politicalman as he is defined in the third digression. Therefore, he is not a pri-mary and radical inscicutor. And therefore he muse live in a ciry of lawsthat are de jure, chat are legitimate in a royal man's absence (even if chis isa second-order legitimacy). Now, in such a ciry, there is a place for a ku-bernitis, a governor, a pilot, who would be the statesman. But then thisstatesman is no longer an epistimlm. Once again, if he were an epistimOn,the laws would crumble. This statesman is something else, somethingthat has nor been defined in the dialogue, and he practices this weaving ofthe different ans, of the different virtues, of the auxiliary arts of the states-man and statesmanship itself, and of individuals, of bioanchropologicallines chat embody che virtues necessary to the city. What is presupposedfor him to be able co practice chis profession? We aren't rold. And wewon't be told anywhere in Plato's entire oeuvre-it's one of the aporias.We won't even be cold in the laws, where we'll have another regime: agroup ruling the city, in fact, two ruling groups, rhe elected magistrates, On Plato's Statesman

as at Athens, and then that much talked-about nocturnal council. which

is a sort of power that isn't hidden [occultt]. since everyone knows that i1exists, but which in .a sense pulls the strings. And ic is to be assumed chatthe people who belong, by vocation at lease, co this nocturnal council-there arc, indeed, provisions for this--are people who, a bit like those inthe &public but not to the same degree or with the same level of formal-ity, have followed a specific kind of education and training. There is, therefore, this hole, this blank, this gaping void in the States-man: in the end, we don't know what kind of statesman is being talkedabout. And the implicit answer is given in the l.Awr.. It's the statesmanwho belongs to a city whose laws arc to be respected but in which, never-theless, something is always to malce up for [,uppii,, a] the laws. In dra- matic fashion, at che end of long periods of time, when these laws mwtbe reformed, chis is foreseen and provided for; and undramatically, fromday to day--0r, rather, from night to night-this is accomplished by the nocturnal council, which constandy watches over things so that the ltu- bernbiJ (the "government," the "rudder") of the city hugs to the goodway, follows the right path. So, there we are. I'll stop here for today. We have finished with the def- initions and a bit with the general spirit of the dialogue, che function ic serves in the works of Plato's 6nal period. Next time, we'B talk a little about the incidental points and especially about the two major digres- sions on the myth and on the statesman's science.

Question On Parmmi~J. the creation ofphi/o1ophy, and so on. I said last time that there is something like a second creation of philos-ophy by Placo. Well, at what moment was philosophy created? That's dif-ficult to say. As you know, it's traditionally set at the time ofThales, of theIonian school, because they arc supposed to have said things about the cl-ement of being. Aic we entitled to tic the birth of philosophy co that? Formy part, I believe chat this tradition is correct, not for the reason invokedbut because thac is the moment when the inherited representations arecalled into question, destroyed. They have done with cosmogonies,thcogonics, mythology, and so on, and they say: No, that isn't it. Thalessays: It's water. And this water has nothing to do with Poseidon and thewater of mythology. It's an element. Snninar ofFeb,..,,,y 26, 1986 49

Of course, we don't have any texts (from that period). Or just the frag-ment from Anax.imander I studied (in the seminar! three years ago. Bue Ithink that with Anaximandcr, in any case, we already have the philo-sophical statement of a position. And then, afterward, I won't trace thebirth of philosophy back to Parmenidc:s. From this standpoint, its fullblossoming rakes place without any doubt with Heraclirus. We know thathe wrote a book-as Parmenides, after him, wrote a Poem, of which westill have nearly 150 lines. And again three years ago, I tried in my ownway to show chat what Heraclitus states is a set of propositions chat wewould call systematic in the good sense of the term. That is co say, there is an incerrogacion followed by an interpretation of the being of theworld, of the human being, which turns back upon itself, interrogates it- self about itself in a sense, interrogates itself about the powers by whichone can arrive at this knowledge. This is, if you will, the moment of rc- Aection, there, with Heraclitus. In what sense, then, can it be said chat there is a second foundation of philosophy with Plato? First point: perpetual "interrogativity." When I speak of intem,gativity apropos of Plato, I am not intending simply the moment of reAection, which is already there with Heraclitus: Is what I am saying crue? W'hat means do I have in order to state the truth? Aie mysenses deceiving me? Is discourse adequate? No, I am intending some- thing very different, which is very difficult to define, moreover, bur which is found in the dialogues, and in the Statemuzn, of course: the constant reopening of the question, the fact that in a sense, constantly, the result matters less than the path that allowed one to get there. Once posed, thequestion brings up another question, which touches off a third one, andso on. So, one could ask oneself, as in the much ralked-abour dialogue be-tween Cineas and Pyrrhus: Bur why, ultimately, does one do all chat?Why didn't one just sleep peacefully from the outset? Whereas, as Platosays explicitly in the St4tesman, this is the very path of research, which isphilosophy. And it's not so much the faa of reaching a conclusion, suchas: Being is fire. Or: Being is water. Or else: Being is and nor-being is not.W'hat matters is this kind of movement, of process, of progression. And in relation to the pre-Socratics, it really muse seen that it's onething to try to give a set of positions that somehow or ocher are groundedand mutually coherent and it's something else entirely to introduce pre-cisely chis perpetual interrogaciviry, rhe idea rhac, ultimately, there is nostacemcnc alongside which one can lie down and rest. It is in this sense\0 On Platoj Stat..:Sman

rhat we really have a second creation of philosophy. I know that in saying

chis I am irritating 11!.any historians of philosophy, for whom there arc o~cor several Platonic systems. But the difference between the pre-Socraticsand Plam-Socraccs himself being the enigma-is that for the pre-So-cratics there arc statcmcncs upon which one can set or rest the truth.Now, for Plato, there arc and there are not. There arc, for at each momentone goes through phases, positions, or dsc one could no longer say any-thing. Even in order to refute an idea, one must posit the possibility ofthat idea and the possibiliry of its refutation as provisionally incon-testable. Bue ultimarcly, whar is created by Plato--and perhaps uncon-sciously-is this endless movement. I say perhaps or in pan uncomciou.sly,for here one cannot speak of unconscious creation when it comes to awriter like Plato, who wrote a dialogue on knowledge, the Theaetetus,which doesn't lead anywhere, except to three theses about knowledge, allthree of which arc refuted, and who wrote the Parmmu:ks and its enigmason being. And, moreover, the Sophist's very own ontological thesis showsthat that's the way things arc. If you will, there's a sort of prolongacion-which he doesn't make and which is perhaps a bit audaciow, if not reck-less, to make-a prolongation that is gnosiologkal, about the theory ofknowledge of the Sophist's oncology. In Greece-and, in my opinion, inall thought-being and truth arc correlative. To say being means: It's true.And to say: It's true means: It's like that. And similarly for falsehood andnonbeing. Now, what does Plato say in the Sophist? He says that "ten thousandtimes ten thousand, being is not ... and not-being is" (259b). In orderthat something might be said, there is a sumplolti, a "complexion," of be-ing and nonbeing at the narrowly logical level of affirmations and nega-tions. Bur in the same way it can be said that there is always in discoursea complexion of the true and the nontrue. At least, a complexion of whatis true and of what is missing from what is true in order for it to be thedefinitive, 6nal truth, after which everything stops, the world stops. It isbecause there is always this moment of nonbeing in being, this momentof lack of trueness in the true, of still something else that can arise, andthat will arise at a detour in the dialogue, or in another dialogue, or in thenext philosopher, because there is chis movement of philosophical dis-course in order co "correspond" thereto. Plato isn't just simply explicating the source from which statementsshoot up; he has a specific attitude in relation to this interrogativity. And Sm,inar ofFebruary 26, rp86 51

the statements don'r just shoot up like chat. But those who rhink-thephilosophers, or the alleged philosophcrs--havc always wanted, once apoint has been reached, co go to sleep near this point, co lie down and restupon it. Thar wasn't the case with Plato. Nor was it the case with Aristo-tle, either, who was the most interrogative philosopher conceivable. Hiscase is thus a fantastic historical aberration: for centuries upon centuries,people spent their lives turning Aristotle into a dogma ne vari~hlr, thesource of all truth: fps~ dixit. . There is, therefore, this intcrrogarivicy chat is created by Plato in themovement of being, and it is continued by Arisrocle. And then comes rea-soning wich another meaning. And here-while talking to you, I was re-flccring-l'm raking up Parmenides and Heraclitus again. Parmenides is,therefore: Being is, not-being is not. The Parmenidean "gesture" is there-fore the ontological gesture. That is to say, it's not finding a general equiv-alent of all beings (ltantJ], as could be said of the pre-Socratics (in an in- terpretation chat is, moreover, somewhat hasty and superficial). Rather,it's reAecting being [ntrt'} as such. This reAeccion, moreover, in the frag- ments of the Poem we have, doesn't go much further than tautology, sinceit consists first of all in affirming that, if one reAects being as such and if there is one being as such, then it must really be concluded that if beingis, well, being is. We have this kind of "starting from which" foundation, but ir comes to an abrupt end, for afterward not much is said. Neverthe-less, there really is an attempt here to try to consider not whether one canimpure to being chis or that other equivalent property bur what one canthink of being as such. In this sense, I would not say that philosophy isborn with Parmenides bur rather that he undoubtedly marks a very im-portant turning point, one that can, moreover, be called the ontologicalturning point as such, a break with the very highly cosmogonical and psy-chological aspect discourse has, for example, in Heraclitus. In relacion to that, Plato creates something new-in terms, once again,of this incerrogativicy, of the parricide we were talking about, and of theintroduction of what I call philosophical reasoning. That's something thatwas unknown among the great pre-Socratics. Once again, Parmenides'Poem is an expository presentation [une expOJition); and the "fragments"of Heraclitus arc plausible statements, which sometimes offer justifica-tions for themselves, their reasons, a gar (a "for" or a "since"), but theydon't form a reasoned expository account [un expoJi raisonni]. So. the correction I'd like to make to what I said co you the last time On I'/Jto( St:atcsman

on chis matter is in one sense minor, in another sense not. It's that on chispoinc Plato is not quite the 6rsc. The 6rst were obviously the Sophiscs.And we srill have th~ remains of something written by Gorgia.s, On Not-Being. 1 (Uncil chcn, all philosophers had wricccn about being. about chcnature of being. Their works arc lost, but we still have the cities, of thesort Peri phweOJ tau ontoJ {On the nature ofbeingJ.) The aud.aciow, evenprovocative Gorgias took the opposite stand from Parmcnides and fromall the philosophers and made it his task m prove that nothing exists. Hemanages chis by means of the following threefold stunt:

1. Nothing is. 2. If something were, it couldn't be known. 3. If it could be known, it couldn't be communicatcd. 4

He is therefore attacking philosophy on three levels: at the level of be-

ing itself, at the level of the knowabilicy of being, and at the level of thevalidity of philosophical discourse. We may well be able, suictly speaking,to have an intuition of being, but we cannot say it. And Plato lacer sayssomething equivalent: N concerns genuine knowledge, we can havesomething like a view, like a Aame that shoots up, but we cannot truly sayit. And he makes a thorough critique of discourse, and especially of writ-ten discourse, saying that it's a sorry image, a very deformed image ofwhat genuine knowledge is. Thus, in Gorgias we have an employment of syllogisms-a negativeone, of course, since it's a matter of demonstrating chat being is not.There's dialeccicaJ reasoning, polemical and pinpoint [ponct11e/J reason-ing: Gorgias has three theses, and he proves them. It's like a lawyer stand-ing before a courr-thc Sophists were also quasi lawycrs--who proves theinnocence or guilt of a defendant: first, he was at the scene of the crime;next, he had blood on his hands; finally, he had every interest in elimi-nating the victim. And so chis wasn't something Plato invented. Nor evenGorgias. This is jwt reasoned discourse. And philosophical reasoning isreally something else: it's a kin"i.:l of reasoning that, as in Plato, is con-stantly examining its presuppositions-and that is how this point is con-nected with the question of interrogativicy. It's a kind of reasoning chatasks itself whether it's right {sll a raison) to posit such and such premises.Or it is so at least when ic is well conducted. And today we have under-scored Plam's negligence or his logical dishonesty when he fallaciously Snninar ofF,b,.,,,,ry 26, 1986 jj

poslts the following outrageous premise in the Statesman: The statesman

is an tpistimOn, a man of science. But in the end, at his best-in theThtaetctus, for example-he keeps coming back to his presuppositions,calls them into question, and asks himself whether he has the right [Ji·/ ak droit] to ust: this mode of reasoning. And on top of that, all this is nolonger just sporadic [ponctuti]; it's really-please cxcwc chis militarymetaphor-like the movement of an army during a great well-ordered=npa.ign being directed by a great leader [chef], where all the a1my corpsconverge, by apparently the most disparate paths, coward the same objec-tive at the opportune moment. It's clear that, behind these reasonings,there is a conductor [chef d'orchtstrr) who conducts the dialogue cowardan objective that isn't isolated [ponctuel] but instead quite essential. That'sPlato's huge innovation. And under both these headings-reflectivenessas well as philosophical reasoning-it can be said chat we really arc wit-nessing with Plato a second creation of philosophy. Now co the question of whether Parmenidean not-being is the same asthe not-being of the Sophist. No one, in the absence of the rwo main pro-tagonists, can give an answer. We don't know what Parmenidcan not-be-ing is. Is it a pure negation of this being chat is posited as one, as identi-cal to itself? If one rereads the Platonic dialogue that is called theParmmide1, one secs precisely why for Plato chis "being one" is unaccept-able, since it leads to absurdities. This will take us to the Sophist and tothe theory of blending, of the mixed, of being and not-being. I would like to end by underscoring something strange going on inParmenidcs. It has undoubtedly not escaped your attention, and it issomething quite basic. From the very beginning of the Poem, Parmenidcssays co us: There arc: rwo ways; you will take the way of truth and you will avoid the way of doxa. On the way of truth you will know that being is, that not-being is not. That you arc not co say that not-being is and that what is is the same thing as chat of which it is thought.~

That's the Parmenidean position, which one encounters on "the way of

truth." But Parmenides begins by saying char "there arc two ways"! Andon "the way of doxa" there is this proliferation of "X" s, which can becalled neither "beings" nor "not-beings," but which are sunbeams, chisroom, this watch, you, me ... so many "elements" belonging rn the doxagroup. Well, the question isn't even whether all that is or i.1o not, and in14 On Pl.at"'' Statesman

whac way. The question is that a discourse is being introduced in which it

is said chat being is one and chat the one alone is, and rhat, in order to in-troduce chis discourse, the world and what is being said about it have prc-viowly been duplic.ated. Two ways have been spoken of, that of truth andthat of doxa. And ulcimacely chis is what the two Plaronic dialogues of theParmenu:ks and the Sophist play on: such a position is untenable. For the radicals of che Eleacic School, and Zeno above all, it is in thatspirit that, according to tradition, they have conducted their variow ar-gumcncs. If you take them literally, ic's as follows: Multiplicity doesn't ex-ist, diversity doesn't exist, alteration doesn't exist, movement doesn't exisr.I wou1d remind you of what I was saying about movement: notwith-standing the examples of Achilles, the turtle, and the arrow, it's not justmovcmcnc according to place, but it's alteration, that doesn't exist. All thearguments where Zeno proves that local movement is impossible can betransposed m show that alteration is impossible. Taking all that seriously,then, one is bound to conclude: We live in a world of illwions, of ghosts,and we ourselves belong among these ghosts, and this statement that wearc ghosts living in a world of ghosts is itself ghostlike. And co say that itis ghostlike is in turn ghostlike. And so on and so forth. So, once again, the culmination of this absolute oncology is a sort ofabsolute skepticism. We can no longer speak. Or else, one really has tocommit parricide, as Plato did in the Pannmuks, and say: No, it's nor likethat; there isn't this one, absolute, immobile being. There is a being thatis determined aJso by negations, which art in a cenain fashion.Seminar of March 5, 1986

I shall begin by reading you an excerpt from the Statesman by way of an

epigraph to our discussion:

I say then that it is your dury and mine to recall the observations now made when it comes for w co blame or to praise the brevity or length of our comments on any subject, so as to th.ink not at all of judging their di- mensions by the relationship they have to each other but really by this parr of the an of measure we were just recommending chat we remember, suit- ability.... Still, Ice w not at all bend everything to chis rule. For, it isn't the need to please chat will impose on us chis concern with proportions, except in an acc:cssory way; and 6nd.ing in the easiest and swiftest way possible the solution to the problem being raised ought to be but a secondary preoccu- pation and not a primary end, if we believe in the reason that prescribes that we indeed rather bestow our esteem upon and accord the very top rank to the method chat teaches how to divide by species, and that, even when a discourse mighc be quicc long, we pursue it resolutely if it renders more inventive he who listens co ir, without making us any more angry to· day about its length than another time about its brevity. Moreover, we mustn't so quickJy and so suddenly let off the hook this judge who criti· cius rhc length of discourses in talks such as ours and condemns digres- sions char arc roundabout, ahcr making the following simple criticism: "These comments arc coo long"; rather, we must make him have co show us, in addition, chat, if briefer, they would have made the listeners more suited co dialcccics and more skillful at finding the arguments chat bring the cruth into its full light and, as to all other blamin~ and all other prais- ings, on whatever point they may bea.r, wt: must crcat chem absolutdy with disdain and not even look as though we are hearing judgments of such a nature. (StammAn 286c-287a, Dies translation {translated into English\) Un Pfatoi- Statesman

In ocher words, wt can go on speaking without concerning ourselves with

the length of what we say or worrying about the criticisms of those whojudge that our comments (propos] are too long or too detailed. We don'tworry about these criticisms. Rather, we go on with our comments, con-cerned simply with the basic issue, that is to say, the question of whetherthis discussion renders those who hear it more inventive or less inventiveand makes them think further or less far.

I would remind you that we have in the Statesman two definitions,

eight incidental points, and three digressions. Also, char we talked lasttime about the two definitions: that of the pastor, first, then that of theweaver. And, finally, that we have found them to be strange, to be con-ducted in a strange manner, and to be ultimately deficient. We also noted that these two definitions were leading to a true defini-tion, which is not posited as such, though we shall come to it again at theend of our discussion, and chat this other definition has nothing to dowith either the pastor or the weaver but concerns in fact the rpiJtimOn, hewho possesses science. The objects of this science arc to be determined,but in the end this science is concerned with the acts of human beings.And more specifically-here again there is a problem, a heterogeneity-it is a science that concerns the "complexion" of the different arts thatmake up [composmt] the city.

Before entering now into the discwsion of the incidental points, I

would like to underscore in passing that, at the very outset of the first ofthese points, in 261c, the Stranger gives Young Socrates some encourage-ment, saying to him, "If you persevere in chis detachment with regard towords, you will show yourself to be richer in wisdom as you advance inage." And this proclaimed detachment from terminology, from words assuch, is interesting to note, for it sheds some definitive light, settling theproblems raised by the Cratylus. Indeed, in that dialogue, two positionsappear: according to one of them, words arc what they arc by nature, andthey correspond by nature to chc objects they designate; and according toche ocher conception, words arc by nomos, that is to say, by convention.In che Crary/us, Socraccs demonstrates in a certain fashion thar both con-ceptions are untenable. But this dfccrivcly is an aporrtic and problematic Seminar ofMarch $, 1966 57

dialogue. And the S1a1w,uzn, which is undoubtedly a dialogue that comes

afterward, squarely gives the answer when the Stranger says, to YoungSocn.ces, "You will be much wiser if, as you grow older, you continue notto gran~ t~ great an importance to words as such, mi spoudauin tpi toiJonoma;,n

IV. The Eight Incidental Points

Th, first incidmtal point b~ins in 262a. and concerns the question of whether o,u is to divide according to species or according to parts.

And quite obviously the Stranger says that a good division, a correct di-vision, doesn't cut up the parts just any which way but follows natural ar- ticulations. The part must possess a Form, an eidos, to mtros hama eidos rchetiJ {262b}. The same idea returns later in the Stausman, in 2.87c, where it's a matter of dividing according co the closest number. It is co be found agajn in the Philrbw and elsewhere, 1 and this basic problematic is also found in incidental point number three, to which I shall return. 'What's at issue is the opposition: arbitrary division according to quantities/ division according to species. Now, this of course points to a fundamental prob- lem: Can we establish distinctions solely on the basis of quantities? Orelse are there Forms, species, eidi, on the basis of which one can establishdivisions, the articulations of masses, of mulciples, of things chat present themselves in number? And what Plato is saying here is quite literally: When you divide, di-vide according to the right properties. That is to say, according to prop-erties that constitute Forms, eidi. And we end up in a sense with the fol-lowing statement, which in icsclf is very problematic: Every property (aswe would say nowadays) defines a class; and every class defines a property.Now, that is indeed what occurs in the logic of the living being [du vi-vant], in the logic of the human. And it's something that, when pushedto the limit, leads to paradoxes and aporias. For, indeed, from che ab-solute and abstract point of view, we cannot say that there is an equiva-lence between property and class. There exist properties that do not de-fine a class-more exactly, chat do not define a set. Thar's what Russell'sparadox, for example, says: The property "set chat does not belong co ic-sdf" is a property, but it docs not define a set; for, if one posits "Let therebe a set A of all sets that do not belong to themselves," we end up in a On I'latv's Statesman

concradiction-this set has to belong, by definition, to itself and ar the

same time, contrarily, it must not so belong. In the case of Place,, we aren't going to go co the limit of abstraccion; wearc interested simply in the Forms, in the tidi, which form classes. Andthis opens up another question, to which the Statesman docs not respondand which also appears in other dialogues of Plato, the Pannmides, for ex-ample, and in the Phikbu.s, too: How can an eidos belong to another eitios,and what docs that mean? And one can even go much further: Whatplace must be given to properties? Aic properties sufficient for classifying,or is an eidos much more than just properties? That is only touched uponlightly in 263a, and there is no answer; there arc simply some exemplifi-cations of good divisions. Like, for example, divisions inco rwo, symmet-rical divisions: male and female, or even and odd. But can one generalize?We also have nonsymmetrical divisions, as in the Phikbw, where therearc divisions into three, or into even more than chat. And all that raises a very important question that is not resolved in theStatesman. I emphasize it because we see here how problems that still re- main problems for us today were raised and provisionally resolved. Foeexample, in the Statesman and in the Sophist, we have a division appar-ently through al non-a. One begins by establishing a sort of hierarchy: ascience, a very general art. Is this science theoretical or not? One then takes the noncheoretical branch, within which one establishes a propertyand leaves aside that which is not characterized by chis properry. That is to say, the descending order, the specification, the branches that go to-ward the details each rime go by way of a positive a, the rest being non-a. Now, that of course appears to be artificial. Let us say I begin by per- forming divisions by saying: Proper[)' a, OK; proper[)' non-a, no, that ap- pertains to what doesn't interest me. And I continue: a', yes; non-a', no;a", yes, non-a", no, and so on. And I have here a dichotomy chat some-times appears to be natural but sometimes to be entirely ani6cial. Andthat remains a problem; Plato offers no answer. Bur he makes one sec theinccrrogation that is always there in a division. I can always, for example,divide into al non-a, black I non-black. But to the extent that any objecthas several characteristics, I can cake any one of them; and what possessesthis characteristic is a, what doesn't possess it is non-a. That's all. And onthe one hand, Plato is criticizing that. And this is connected up, more-over, with rhe second incidental point, which we'll come to in a minute.That is to say, ic isn't reasonable to say: I am dividing humanity, as the SrmiMrofMarch f, 1986 19

Greeks do, into Grttks and non-Greeks, that is to say barbarians (or, asinitially meant, individuals who do not speak Greek or any comprehensi-ble language). So, that's being criticiu:d. But at the same time, the examples Plato gives of a correct division-maJc/ female, c:ven / odd-give us a division chat is at once a dichotomy(division in two and not into three or more) and a good division. For, itdoes indeed correspond to something that is a natural ejdos, a natural Form. We therefore have here a sort of tangling up [enchevitrrmmt] ofone procedure for division-which consists in positing a property, a char-acteristic, and in dividing according to whether the objects do or do not possess chis characteristic-with another manner of going about things that consists in finding properties that are relacive, of course, to one an-other but not necessarily in contradictory polarity, in al non-a exclusiv- ity-it can be, for example, a plurality-and chat as properties also allow one to divide, to establish a hierarchy. This is what, for example, botany and biology do when they classify planes or animals: there are ten orders,some of which have four classes, ochers six classes; then there are gcnuses, families, and so on. Here we encounter a problem: How is one to split up and share out [rfpartir] what is? And in chis "How is one split up and share out what is?n we have two bases that are not identical: one being the yes / no-chat is to say, a property and the contradictory of chis property-the ocher be- ing properties, characteristics of objects chat can be 2, 3, 6, n . ... Andhow from then on is one to divide? We cannot go any further; I don't wane to go any further. We mustsimply recall on the one hand chat, for example, in Hegel-and alreadyin Kane-the rwo becomes three. That is co say, what is is always pre-sented as bdonging consecutively to a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthe-sis; therefore, three does indeed become not only a privileged number bucalso a number that categorizes, chat articulates, what exists. And we canalso cum to contemporary physics and to its unanswered questions [uspoints d'inten-ogation]: Can the ultimate elements, the search for the finalelements be made by means of an al non-a, chat is co say, by means of aproperty and the contradictory of chis property~ And chis is apparent alsoin che importance the category of symmetry has for all chat is physical,char is to say, for che tendency in research in general, in physics research,to establish symmetrical entities and councerentities; the tendency, cherc:-fore, co perform, in a certain way, divisions by two, dichotomies-the60 On Plato'.• Statesman

privilege of d.ichotomics!-but at the same time without ever culminat-

ing in the effective possibility of a division by dichotomy. I don't want ro go any further. I don't know if you see the importanceof this matter, what it means, but ultimatdy the quesdon is why and howthere are several things and not one. If there isn't a single one altogether,there arc sevcraJ of them; and these several things, we class them, we clas-sify them. Why isn't there one fundamental property that would allow wto split up and share our everything that is into that which possesses thisfundamental property and that which doesn't possess it within an inter-nal, intrinsic organization? The strange thing in reality is that chis di-chotomous or dichotomizing procedure is ar once valid and not valid.That is to say, it is dependable and valid in a very great number of e2.ses-including once again, on the elemencary level, in the realm of physics.Here's an example: everything that is elementary, like a molecule-well,ir's actually particles that obey either Fermi-Dirac statistics or Bose-Ein-stein statistics. There arc fermions and bosons. That's a division in two,and here we find ourselves facing a dichotomy of all conceivable particles.In addition, at levels that arc almost as basic, what we encoumcr are notdichotomies, or even trichotomies a la Hegel, but ..polyromics." We livewith both of these as wcU as an unanswered question: How and why doesone divide what is into classes, and into two classes or more than two-and why?

The second incidmtal point (263c-264c) is. ofcourse. tied to thiJ. In any case, the Stranger criticius dichotomi~s that haw su.bjectivt bas~s.

So it is with the Greeks' division between Greeks and non-Greeks. And

rhe same goes, he says ironically, if one rakes the wisest animals: the gera-noi, cranes. They'd divide up all living beings into cranes and noncrancs.Well, char won'r do. And there is here even an implicit cricicism of the actof taking something subjective as a basis for division. We have here, of course, a bit of an echo ofXcnophanes' very old crit-icism in the Fragments of his chat we still have. We spoke about chis threeyears ago. Thar is to say, Xcnophancs' criticism of all anthropomorphicconstructions of the world, his much talked-about sratemcnc char .. if cheEthiopians [the BlacksJ have gods, obviously these gods are black. Bue ifhones had gods, well, these gods would be horses. " 1 Therefore, it's purelyanthropocentric if the human beings we know give a human form to rhe Smiinar ofMarr:h 5, 1986 61

gods or to God, who do not possess this form. Likewise, Plato is sayinghere that divisions based solely upon subjective criteria, or upon what thesubjectivity that divides is, must be dismissed, and one must try ro makethe distinction according to the thing itself-the primary point, the pointof dcpanure being the intrinsic properties and not the properties that de-pend upon the one who is making the division or upon that one's pointof view.

The third in,itkntaJ p"int--by for the most important onc--concerns

paradigms.

In fact, this incidental point is rather closely connected with the others,both with chc first one and with other ones that follow, in panicular thefifth, which concerns the genuine object of the dialogue (dialectic). So,what does chis third incidental point say? le is preceded by a son of aban-donment, neither very comprehensible nor very well justified, of the def-inition of the statesman or of the royal man as pastor. That won't do, saysthe Stranger; we must start over again. How is one to start over again? Aparadigm must be found staning from which one can try to understandthe statesman. All that begins in 277d, where the Stranger says, "It is dif-ficult to show something important while doing without paradigms." What follows then is a sort of avalanche of extremely important ideas,which are much more important than what is said in the rest of the dia-logue. First of all, says the Stranger, one must use paradigms, since each ofus, even though we know everything in dreams, risks not being aware of(ignorant] these things in a waking state. (This is, of course, one of Plato'sessential antral ideas, and I shall come back to it, but it isn't clear why itappears here). Young Socrates doesn't get it, and so the Stranger makes, iflmight say, a third incidental point-digression, saying: Well, to get you tounderstand what I mean, I have to give you a paradigm of the paradigm. And he expounds as paradigm of the paradigm children and letters. Inthe shortest syllables, children can easily begin to sense, to understand,the elements, the stoicheia, the letters. And thereupon, children can ex-press themselves while telling the truth. And then, when it comes to com-plicated syllables, children at first become tongue-tied [st'mbrouilknt],but in understanding the simple ones they can establish similarities andan identical narure from the complexfons they encounter, the sumplokai,and on chat basis, they little by little come to recognize in a confident way61 On Plawi Statesman

what is the same and what is ocher. Therefore, we have this learningproc<ss [appm,tissag,] by children of th< d<m<nts and of th< complc:xcsof these clements, ·Which when they arc short are relatively acc.cssible inan easy way, but arc much more difficult when they get bigger. Andtherein, it is by analogy, by similarity, that children will come to sec thetruth concerning more "complicated" complex.ions ofletters. Well, says the Stranger, chat's what is co be understood by paradigm.Thar's a paradigm of the paradigm in general. That is to say, when onecries to see something, co comprehend something, co think something bymeans of a paradigm, one is intending one and rhe same thing found insomething else that is disordered or char is not connected. One tries to in·tend this one and che same thing in a correct way; and precisdy by meansof the paradigm, one ultimately ends up intending it in a correct way andin a collected fashion by rediscovering it in both of chem.

Therefore, what is supposed by the theory of the paradigm is that we

possess the truth, or that we can possess the truth, or in any case that wecan reach chc truth more easily when it is a matter of certain simple cle-ments, but that we arc in trouble, confused, when faced with the totalityof complex objects. By way of consequence, we have to come back to theunderstanding of the limited paradigm about a relatively small object, aswas just done with letters. And that's also what we'll do, says the Stranger,in crying to find a paradigm concerning the statesman or the royal man.And that will be done in order to come back, next, after this paradigm,to the statesm.;i.n or to the royal man. And without further ado, and usingsome expressions char, when one reads the text, seem truly astonishing,the Stranger thereupon introduces weaving as a paradigm (179a-b):

What could we c.;i.kc then as a paradigm chat would be bound by the

same operations as sc..tesmanship and, although very small, wou.Jd suffice ro m.;i.kc us 6nd through comparison the object we arc seeking? By Zeus, 0 Socrates, if we don'c have anything dsc at hand, would you like us for want of anything bcncr co cake weaving? ... For perhaps that will show us the way toward statesmanship.

Jr's as if chis has fallen from the sky or been drawn at random. And, ofcourse, Young Socrates acquiesces: .. Why not?'" he says. Herc we have a complccdy arbitrary imposition of weaving, but I Snni,wr ofMarr:h J, 1986 63

shan't dwell upon it now. 'What inccrcsts us is rhat weaving is introduced

here, imposed, after which time it becomes necessary to find a commonparticipation in the forms that arc the same in both weaving and the ac-tivity of the statesman or the royal man. Perhaps it's that in weaving onehas a relational form, a form of composition that will help us to find whatthe statesman or the royal man is about. Bue at bottom, what's happening in the third incidental point is thatPlato is raising, without resolving, rwo key problems char are also en-countered in the rest of his work. For him, both of these problems arequite fundamental.

I. The first one-which is, moreover, the more weighty-is raised by

Plato in the form of an incidental point inside the incidental point, inpassing. lc's the phrase I ju.st read to you, that it is difficult to show some-thing important, since "each of us risks finding that we know everythingin dreams and arc ignorant of everything in a waking state" (277d). That'sthe first problem. 2. As for the second problem, it's the following: Upon what basis andhow do elements lend themselves to complexions; and upon what basiscan we discover analogous complexions of the same form across the cle-ments that make up these complexions? And in fact, chis second problemis included in the first. For the moment, I am going to concentrate on thefirst one.

Paradigms must therefore be used to indicate, to show, major things.

And why must that be done? Because each of us knows all these things asin a dream but doesn't know [ignort] them in a waking state. The phraseis there, and it comes back in 278e. That is ro say chat, in order to ad-vance, it is necessary to pass from sleep to being awake. Now, we knowchat this is Plato's fundamental theory. It is expounded at length in theMmo, in the Pha,tUJ, and elsewhere: Each of us knows [connait]-poten-tially, virtualJy, as will be said anachronistically-and knows everythinghe can know. Only, he doesn't know [1ait] it. That's Plato's conception: It'snot known; ir's sleeping in us. Each of us is like someone who is sleepingwith this knowledge. Lee us recall the analogous expression chat comesfrom Heraclitus-not chat Heraclitus would have had the same idea, but,well, the expression is already there. Each of us knows [connait] bur docsnot know [sait] that he knows (connait]; and each of us can be helped tounderstand what he knows [sait] already. That's what Socrates does in the On Platoj Statesman

Mmo: he takes an iUitcrate young slave and, both apparently and in real-ity, gets him to prove the most advanced, the most mysterious, the mostincomprehensible theorem, the most paradoxical one for that age,namely, the theorem establishing that the ratio of the hypotenuse to thesides of an isosceles right triangle is not rational but equal to the squareroot of two. This theorem, discovered relatively recently at that time, wasmonstrous, ourrageous, paradoxical, because it established rhar there arenumbers rhat arc not rational-anitoi, as is said in Greek, chat is to say,umayabk. It was equivalent, for chat time, let us say, at least to provingthat space is curved, for example-a theorem as advanced, as difficult, asthat. So, Socrates takes a slave and has him prove chis theorem. And theobjection that "he's making him discover it through yes/ no answers"doesn't hold up, since he could do the same thing with an Atheniannobleman. A footnote can be added here: he has him prove it by asking him theright questions, ones to which the slave gives the right responses eachtime. One can put an ironic spin on this point: it's Plato who is makinghim give the right answers. Thar doesn't cancel our what the dialogue istrying to illustrate: that each person in truth knows, except that he doesn'tknow that he knows. And someone is needed to awaken this knowledgein him. Here, it's Socrates; more or less everywhere in Plato, it's the realSocrates or the supposed Socrates who asks the questions, who poses rhcright questions, and who allows others to arrive at the truth. And this is connected with another aspect, one to which I alluded lasttime: How can one seek what one doesn't know? Or: How can somethinglike knowledge be gained if one doesn't already possess it? In fact, whatPlato says is that one cannot truly acquire it: one already poSSC$Ses it. Andthat's the goaJ of chis theory of anamncsis, which is tied up with the im-mortality of the soul: Souls know because they have seen the Ideas else-where, in a supracelcsrial place; and in becoming embodied, they arcweighed down and they forget this knowledge, which nevertheless re-mains; it still resides within.

This very strange theory may seem archaic, folkloric, blz.arre, wild,primitive, pagan, something we have no wish to accept. However, thistheory is, in a sense, entirely justified. ~y? For a very simple reason:every theory chat sa~ knowledge stems from a learning process runs into SnniMrofMarr:h J, 1986

insurmountable difficulties. That is co say, we find ourselves in a situation

where it is practically impossible co accept the idea that something mightbe learned. And that comes back in Plato already. The question of the Mmo is:How is it that I can seek if I don't know what I'm seeking? If I don't knowwhat I'm seeking, I won't recognize it if I find it; I won't know that thatwas what I was searching for. What then docs suiting, w1rchingfor mean?What is this strange and singular state of knowing/ not-knowing in whichI am able to seek? Bue there's also learning. How can I learn? What does it mean to learn?And this is connected to the whole problem of inducrion-1'11 come backto this later. Ir can be said inductively: All men are bipeds. How does oneknow that? One has simply looked at men. I am passing over rhe face thatinduction is empirical; one may not know. OK. Bur how do you knowthat what you're observing are men? Of course, one can say: I caJIman . ... Bur one is obliged to get into more elementary characteristics.On the basis of these more elementary characteristics, one is obliged toposit an individuality that is ac the same rime a universality and an essen-tiality about which you cannot say that you grasp it in reality. In any case,it doesn't go without saying. I shall come back to this point. Anyway, theproblem this inCtdencal statement is confronting, and to which Plato hasresponded, is the following: How can there be learning? And in principle,the answer is that there cannot be learning. And it must be seen how little this position is folkloric, antiquated,backward, weird, for it's exactly what someone like Noam Chomsky pro-f~s today in linguistics. Linguistic strucrurcs, says Chomsky-not thesurface strucrures but the dttp structures by means of which you speak, wesptak-are innate. To speak means to organiz.e the world; it doesn't meanblahblahblahblah. lt means: staring propositions, sentences, which havesubjects, verbs, adjectives, adverbs. This-and here we arc returning toPlato/ Aristotle, of coursc--expresses in linguistic form the logical cate-gories: If there arc substantives, that's because there are substances; if therearc adjectives, that's because there arc attributes; if there are verbs, that'sbcc.ausc there arc processes, or actions, or states. There is an oncology be-hind grammar, and this grammar is innate. Not under its apparent form,where the apparent grammar of French is entirely different from Arabic orChinese grammar, but in the deep structures, which are the same. Well, OK, that's Chomsky's theory; it's debatable. Chomsky himself66 On Pl.atus Sracesman

says that his linguistics is a "Cartesian" linguistics. And Descartes is

someone who thinks chat we have a priori ideas. And that's also whatPlato says. It matcCl"s linle whether you stick on it the metaphysics thatthis a priori was learned by looking at the Ideas in a supracclesrial site orotherwise. There's an a priori. Since we're talking about Chomsky, what can one say of the strongpoints and weak points of his position? (We're still at the preparatorylevel.) Well, Chomsky talks about syntactic structures, deep structures.That is to say, there's a subject, a verb, and so on. But the quescion that isbeing posed is obviously the following: Ne these deep syntactic struc-tures, which would be-lee us suppose--rhe same in every tongue, radi-cally separable from semantic magmas? And the answer is: Certainly not.It cannot be said that semantic magmas can be radically separated fromsyntactic structures. In other words, it cannot be said chat any significa-tion whatsoever can be poured out into any tongue whatsoever, whateverthe syntactic structures of chat tongue. There lSn'c chat kind of separabil-ity. Therefore, we cannot purely and simply accept chat what is a prioriare fully syntactic structures. And as we know, on the other hand, that semantic magmas, the mag-mas of significations chat each tongue bears, arc altered in and throughsocial-historical creation, it is therefore impossible for us to gram thatsyntactic structures are fully innate and radically separate from semanticmag!Jlas. And we can back up chis point. A.5 for what does hold in this Chomskian theory, we know chat, as anursling, every human being can learn any tongue, will learn any tongueto which it is exposed. But not only "wiU learn": will think according tothat tongue. This means that the nursling will understand chc significa-tions char tongue carries along with itself and that it won't understand thesignifications that arc in other tongues. Or it will have to make a specialeffort to learn chat tongue. But anyhow, we can add that, for the greatmajority of human beings, this faculty of learning a mngue-likc allother faculties: becoming a dancer, a pianist, and so on-is lost once onegets older. Therefore, we arc dealing with an a priori faculty chat consistsin storing some a priori, but storing different a prioris. Storing some apriori-why? Because, when the nursling is in the process of storing, itforms irs thought according to that tongue. And quite obviously one'stongue is an a priori imposition of a structure, or an organization forwhat is to come. Seminar ofMarr:h 5, 1986

So--l'm returning to learning, and we arc going to make a long circuit

within this labyrinth-learning, yes, but what is this learning on che partof the child? It cannot be said that the soul knows, a priori, all tongueschat ever were extant, all the less so as tongues arc scill in the process ofbeing created. Nor can it be said chat the soul has seen these tongues in asupracdcstial site. We know then that the soul possesses a priori the fac-ulty of learning any language whatsoever, therefore chc faculty of enter-ing into any system of thought whatsoever. And we know coo chat, withtime, the soul loses this faculty. Therefore, we know that there is a teach-ing, a learning, and chat this learning is not a learning; it's a learning ofthe forms oflearning, of recipients, of molds, of articulations, but it's nota true learning. If you learn a tongue, you learn ahead of things, ahead in terms of its organization, its articulation, and ahead also in relation to thecontent. But on the other hand, we are obviously incapable of accepting the idea that there might be a complete tabula rasa, that there would simply be a faculty of learning, becawe, as I jwt said, a capacity for educational formation [une capacili rk formation] mwt be presupposed. If the subjectwere not at minimum capable of forming what it is furnished, be it jwt the elementary words of its tongue, the subject could say absolutely noth- ing; ir couldn't even grasp what it is furnished. We therefore need to think that the subject can form nothing by in-duction without a forming capacity [une capacilifonnante], which, itself,is certainly innate in the subject, a priori. And what is meant by chisforming capacity? It means a capacity chat on an elementary IFvd is dis-criminating. This goes hand in hand, without being identical, with thefact chat the subjecr has to possess the capacity for some kind of recogni-tion of forms. And there's also, quite evidently, a universalizing or, if youwill, a generalizing capacity. It isn't just a matter of separating, of dis-criminating, but also of recognizing chat a is, anew, what had alreadybeen discriminated. And then, it's recognizing, establishing, on the basisof the object a that has been discriminated and of which a form has beenfabricated, being able to say that there's another object a' that offers itselfat once as separate and as presenting the same form; and it's puning a anda', then perhaps many ochers, into the same class. This is to say that thesubject possesses cacegorial or categorizing scrucrures, a capacity for posit-ing-classification-differentiation already almost at the sensorial level [auniveau tU la sm.1orialitlJ.68 On Plato's Statesman

But we cannot stop there. We arc obliged to grant, on the one hand,chat every human ~ubjcct (though this is true, too, for any subject what-soever) has to possess a priori a subjective organization, this subjective or-ganization being a capacity for organizing what gives itself out, what of-fers itself. And that capacity cannot be a slave co what offers icself, cannotgive in to [obtir 4] what offers itself: it has co possess something like con-siderable "degrees of freedom." And that's something we know, for exam-ple, from the following quite trivial material example. We know that oursensoriahry permits us to organize colors in a certain fashion. And weknow that there exist animals whose scnsorialiry makes them organizecolors in another fashion and makes them sensitive, for example, to thepolarization of light, whereas we aren't. We ourselves "noticed" the polar-ization of light only starting in the nineteenth century and with the aidof special apparatuses. Therefore, subjective organization, organization as the relatively freecapacity to organize what offers itself-what offers itself being at first, ofcourse, X But at the same time---and here is the other aspect-this sub- jective and relatively free organization couldn't organize jwt anything. It has to rely upon, to lean upon [si'°t4J"], a minimal organization of what is-which in a ccnain fashion is, at the ultimacc level, always unknown and remains ever co be soughc afccr. Let me explain. There is a crcc, then three trees, then a dozen trees, and it's a grove. There are five hundred of chem, and it's a wood; then fifty thousand, and it's a forcsc. Herc, lhcn, our language (the language we arc speaking) discriminates and organizes what appears in its own fashion.Another language might have a hundred words for organizing these same trees. Bur in the end there is lhis particular organization of the given, and ic seems entirely arbitrary. But there arc two points on which it is not ar- bitrary. The first is lhat lhcrc arc trees in the plural, chac we do noc sec OM tree. And we sec cows, human beings. Thac is to say, chis univcrsalicy, cowhich we accede chrough organization, is in another manner already sub-jacent in what is given. And tf ic were not subjaccnc, we wouldn't makerhac particular organization. Anochcr one would be made. But in order tomake another one of them, any one, we need something chat is quasi uni-ver.11al in an immanent way. And we thereby have somcching char docs notdepend upon our a priori subjective organization, and this is the fact thatthere are ten trees, or one hundred trees, or fifty thousand trees. Hercagain, thi~ depend.-. upon chc organization, upon our definitions, of whac SnninAr ofMarch 5, 1986

is called trtt. If someone calls trtt the branches, that makes millions oftrees. All the same, it will always be a certain number. And chc possibiliryof using chis number is based upon the fact that whac you encounter,what is furnished, is similar enough for it co be able ro be counted. Andthat's something we couldn't invent absolucdy. Or rather, we would always be able to, of course, and ac the same timewe couldn't really. So, ff you've done a bit of set theory, you can perfectlywdl say that aH the objects, living or nonliving, in chis room form a set.An arbitrary application of numbers, co be sure. Bue each time we ar-tcmpt to know, co understand, something, we arc refusing (and here, I re-turn to incidental point number one), precisely, co apply numbers arbi-trarily. It can be said, for example, chat then: are in this room not one setbut rwo: human beings and the ocher things. That makes some sense,perhaps. But chere are again two sets if one considers chis part of theroom and that other pan. OK, but what's the interest? What knowledge,what understanding does one gain therein? No, we'll form numbered secs,when it comes to reality, on the basis of other characteristics that a.How usto fortify the separation, division, and enumeration we perform. And inorder m make these secs we shall be enumerating-cen trees, ten sheep--we shall rely upon something that supports [itayt'] this enumeration andchat does not depend entirely upon us. If we take the tree, you can see clearly both sides of the issue. On theone hand, if you're a physicist, you know that this tree is shot through atevery instant with millions of perfectly ungraspable neutrinos. So, what'schis tree, then? Where arc ics boundaries? From chis side, setting off thiscrec seems entirely arbitrary. But on the ocher hand, it isn't arbitrary.Why? For the very simple reason that, as a matter of face, a tree repro-duc.cs itself as chis type of tree. Aristotle says: AnthrOpoJ anthrOpon gmnai,"a human engenders another human," a human can be engendered onlyby a human. So you can say, along with all a priori philosophers: We or-ganize the world entirely. Everything that is observed in a laboratory, aphysicist would say, depends upon the setup of the instruments. Ques-tion: Is there an instrumental setup by means of which you can make acow be born of a crocodile? No, the cow resists, and so does the crocodile.And you arc obliged, in your organization, to lean upon the articulationswith which what comes forth [er qui vimt] already furnishes you, with-out it ever being possible to eliminate totally from what comes forth ourpoint of view on what comes forth.70 On P/a_·aj StJtesman

Wdl. how is chis organization performed?

I'm now leaving the "leaning-on" [ltayagtJ side, because the leaning-onside answers in face to ontology, a point we'll come co later. I'm keepingco the organization ~ide, co the subjective side. We were taJking about dis-crimination-that is to say separation, recognition, and universaJization.If you reffcct upon these three terms, you'll sec char they are nearly unan-alyzable. One can separate out their elements, but one wilJ be biting one'stail immediately: By means of what does one separate? By means of whatdoes one recognize a form? By means of what does one universalize? Andthen, one can universalize only separate things, but recognizing a form al-ready contains the seeds of a universalizarion. OK, but setting aside the fact that a thing has been isolated, has beenseparated, how docs one recognize it? One recognizes it because it is sim-ilar [umblabk] to itsc:lf or to something else. Bue how docs one know thatit is similar to itself or to something else? What does it mean that a thingis similar to itself or to something else? Of course, to say similar doesn'tmean identical. If it isn't identical, that means char it is not completelyalike [umblab/.r). But it is posited as similar bee.a~ one considers that apart of chis thing is sufficient for one co be able to characterize the thing,for one therefore to be able-be it only provisionally-to pass from thepart to the whole.

Generalization. When one universalizes, one passes from like [srm-

blab/.r] to like. One doesn't regroup identical things: if they were identical,they'd be unique. Bue if you make: several copies of a thing via repetition,those copies aren't identical. They are different, be it only through theirdifferent position (sec Leibniz on indisccmiblcs). When one passes fromlike to like, one is making what in rhetoric or in literature is called ametaphor: a hero and a lion arc similar. This corresponds in psycho•maly-sis to what is ca.Jlcd a di..splacmrmt; and it corresponds, too, to what canbe called "valuing as," equivakna, exchange value in economics. Onething cm be taken for another if they are enough alike:: one wheel of mycar is flat, so I replace it with the spare wheel. It's not the same wheel, butthey arc similar enough for me to make the displacemenc, the metaphorfrom one wheel m the other. Why can I do it? Because the two wheelshave a p:.ut chat is more than similar, quasi identical, sufficiently identicalas to need and usage. I therefore pass from the part to the whole, which Snninar ofMarr:h r, 1986 71

presupposes chat previously I had passed from the whole to the part. For,I cannot pass from the pan co the whole if I don't have the part. Thismeans chat, to the extent chat I discriminate things, I can discriminate inthis thing some pans, and, on the basis of the kinship of these parts, passto the similar and to the universal. Now, passing &om the whole to the part, or from the part to the whole,is what is cailed in rhetoric metonymy. Would you like to have a glass todrink? That's a metonymy and also a synecdoche: one drinks the contentsof a glass, not the glass-that'd make your siomach feel very bad. In psy-choanalysis, this is condmsation. And the word glass is valued for. This isno longer a schema of cquivalen~ but, rather, a schema of instrumental-ity, of belonging. We therefore have these two absolutely fundamental procedures in rhiswhole labor of recognition: separation and univcrsalization. That is to say,on the one hand, the passage from the whole to the pare and from the partto the whole; on the other, the passage from like to like. Or, metonymyand metaphor, without one being able to establish a priority of one in re-lation to the other. It would be tempting to say that every metaphor pre-supposes a metonymy. When I say, Hercules was like a lion, my metaphorrelics upon a metonymy, namely, chat both Hercules and the lion have aproperty, a part of themselves that is bravery or strength. Bue chis capacityto discriminate and co give part and whole implies an extreme form of thesimilar: the capacity co maintain something in its identity. Lee us retain simply this: There c.an never be recognition of somethingsimilar on the basis of the exhaustive totality of its characccrisric.s. For, ifthere were an exhaustive totality of characceristic.s, it would no longer besimilar; it would be an impossibly idcntic.al thing. Every similarity is, ofcourse, partial. That's nearly a tautology. And we find everything we have just said again in reality when we aredealing with living beings, even before there is human consciousness. For,what docs one notice at the level of rhe living being? Ir is, of course, itscapacity to discriminate/separate; to recognize; and to universalize, torecognize in the categories of the universal. Once again, a dog chasesgame, nor whales. There arc classes. And that holds on rhe clcmencarylevel. But how docs this universalization occur in rhe living being? Well, wenow know the answer in an entirely positive way: Ir occurs by means of arelation of the whole and the pares-and, more specifically, on the basis72 On Pk1t1.:i St.:.rcsman

of the part, or paru. It's the parts chat arc recognized and that lead to thewhole. And we positivdy know that to be true on the elementary level ofbiology, at the ccllular-kvel, and in particular in the recognition that cakesplace in immunology or in the assimilation of food: lymphocytes recog-nize antigens through one of the latter's parts, their stcrcochcmica.l fea-ture. An antigen has a place on its surface that the lymphocyte, like rwopieces of a puzzle, will recognize, adapting itself to it, clinging to it like aglove. From then on other chemical reactions will occur, and the antigenwill be destroyed--0r the food will be assimilated. There is therefore a site of attachment, which can be called the lym-phocyte's leaning-on knowledge. And the antibody is capable of recog-nizing, according to rhc nature of rhc site in question, this or that cate-gory of antigens. It therefore has in itself the principle of belonging: Allof that belongs to something. And it also has a principle of equivalenceor universalizacion, since the antibody will recognize everything thatpresents itself with identical stereochemic.al properties and wHI reactaccordingly. And this goes even further, becawe this kind of process forms the basisfor some medical procedutcs. The invention of sulfonamides consisted inisolating a substance stereochemically so that it will cling to the bac-terium exactly on the site where the latter obtains nutriment. A substancehas therefore been fabricated chat "deceives (trompit]" the bacterium. For,the bacterium, too, knows; and because it knows, it can be mistaken [;tr,ttrompt]. This entire system of stereochemical adaptation is therefore in pan me-chanical. But in part only, precisely because one can deceive a bacteriumas one can fool ltromper} a human being-whereas one cannot deceive agravit:uional mass. I come back to the more general problem. The human subject-thepsychical one, let us say-recognizes objects on the basis of marb. Butwhat marks? And how does one recognize a mark? Why docs one recog-ni1..e a mark? And why such and such a mark? And can it be said that innarure there might truly be pares and wholes? For example, if one con-siders the solar system, where does what is called solAr wind scop? Andhow about the magnetic storms on Earth that go beyond the outermostplanets? What about the ray of sunlight and the particles it creates? Allchar can be said is that what presents itself in narurc offers a certain num-b~r of articulations, poinrs on which divisions can be grafted. But theywill be grafted there and not elsewhere accotding to what the subject Smrinar ofMarch$, 1986 7l

docs. It's the subject that chooses to posit separations at such and such aspot and at another such one. Not the subject at the primary level, obvi-owly, not the completely singular subject: here, we're talking about thecoUcctivc subject, the species. Therefore, it's the subject that organizes a world starting from a chaosin which differences present themselves. Bue in themselves, these differ-ences have no privilege in relation to one another. It's che subject rharprivileges some of them and not others. It's rhc subject that organizes itsworld, that organizes itself in organizing irs world. Why this huge incidental poim/ digression within rhe StateJman's sec-ond incidental point? Because, ultimardy, it's one of the axes of che fol-lowing philosophical problematic: What is a priori and what is a posteri-ori? 'What docs che subject already know before being in contact wich rheworld? And what can the subject learn in the world? And under whatconditions? Chronologically speaking, before being in contact wich rheworld, the subject knows nothing, certainly. Bm it learns only in organ-izing the world and in organizing itself at the same time. Starting fromthe moment a subject is alive, it is self-organization-more exactly, self-creation of irsclf and of the world. And it c.an accomplish that only on thecondition that the world lends itself to such an organization. Now, here we have all of inherited philosophy, from Plato until Hei-degger passing by way of Descartes and Kam, which, when it discussesknowledge or being, conduas its discwsion on the basis of the individ-ual. And this individual lS an individual who comes very late in theprocess, too late. This is the socially fabricated individual, who speaksFrench, English, "Latin or Javanese," as {the surrealist poet} RobertDes nos said, who has a language, who has a way of chinking according tochis language, who belongs to a social-historical world, who has a his-tory-a heavy load of presuppositions indeed! And one would first haveto think the subject in relation to what the subject inherits from the liv-ing being. next in relation to what the social sphere furnishes it. And here,on the social level, we have essentially language bur also a coherent sub-world that passes by way of the family, the first of the human being's ar-rificialized environments with which the subject is furnished. And we alsohave a reworking {rlllaboration], a re-creation by the singular psyche ofall that, of all chat the singular psyche is furnished. Take, for example, a conceprion like the Kantian one on rhe under-standing, the Kantian subject. This subject is bastard, both excessive anddeficient. And this is so for four reasons:74 On Pla::l1 Scarcsman

t. First of all, bccawc one gives on6elf as going without saying a scn-sorialiry of rhis subjea that quite evidently iuelfbdongs to the empiricalworld but is suppos6:I to be passive. Thar"s false: this scnsoriality is, quiteevidently, organizing. And inasmuch as it belongs to the empirical world,it ought itself, in the Kantian view, to belong to a chaotic manifold. Now,that's nor true: the subject's scnsoriality is organizing and organiud.There is therefore in Kant a sensibility whose underlying organi?.arion isunknown [ignon',]. 1. Next, Kam gives himself as going without saying a thought withoutlanguage, which is absurd. Or, a language that is mysteriously innate, uni-versal, and rransccndcncal-which simply doesn't exist. 3. Therefore, Kant doesn't know about (ignort] the social-historicalcharge of which the undemanding parrak,s. 4. And, finally, Kant ignores the other dimensions of psychical subjec-tivity, without which the subject, even the knowing subject, never func-tions. What Kant is describing is a sort of knowing mechanical automa-ton, not a knowing subject. Such a subjea knows only to the extent thatit cathects knowledge, only to the extent that this knowledge is a wish-object or an object of desire. And we have the immediate proof to thecontrary with autistic psychosis, where the subject isn't interested in,doesn't cathect, the knowing of the external world.

This goes 10 show simply the fatal bad old ways into which the inher-ited philosophy falls when it fails 10 t<COgniu: the two-sidedness I was justtalking about, that is to say, when it tries to make a theory of knowledgewhile doing wirhout (1) an ontology of the knowing subject itself, and, atthe same time, without (2) an ontology of the object itself posited asknowable. Every simply apriorisr or apostetiorist theory runs up againstradical impossibilities. Now-and I'm coming back 10 Plato and to the story of sleep andwakefulness-in Plaro as well as in Aristotle the theory of knowledge isinseparable from an ontology. And one even has at once an ontology, acosmology, and a psychology that hold together. And it is, of course, thispsychology that furnishes a theory of knowledge. WeU, can the soul learnin the world? No, says Plato, in terms of the arguments already pur fonh:How can I learn if I don't know already? No induction can ever furnishme with solid knowledge. Therefore, if there is knowledge, it's becausethe soul already knew. And here Plato dr.iws the inevitable conclusion: If Stminar ofMarch $, 1986 71

it already knew, that means that it knew elsewhere and beforehand; it

means char there is therefore an immortality of the soul. And this ab-solutely ceases being folkloric; it's nearly a consequence. When embod-ied, the soul falls into a kind of sleep, a sleep from which it can awakenespecially if it is assisted in chis awakening by a midwife like Socrates.And on~ awoken, it rcca.lls the Forms, the eidi, which it knew as imma-terial, therefore immortal. Bur the world-and we're coming to cosmology-with which the soul is dealing is not immaterial hue material. How then can we know it? Well, that's precisely what Plato's cosmology and his theory of the Ideas are try- ing to respond to: The effectively actual world is corporeal, not just ma- terial. It's sOm.a echon, as he says in the Statesman, in the myth we shall becommenting next rime {cf. 2.69d--c}. & corporeal, che world cannot sim- ply be Forms; it participates in becoming and change, but it also par- ticipates in the Forms, in the eidi. And as, relative to che eidi, rhe soul doesn't know buc recognizes [ne connait pas mai.s reconnait]. relative to the things of che world, relative to corporeal things, it knows something in it insofar as these corporeal things participate in the Forms; chat is to say, insofar as they aren't pure matter. Herc we have a paradigm char brings us back to the incidental point about which we were speaking. And therefore it is only when one has un- derstood, not so much Plato's theses, but the articulation of the problem-atic underlying them chat one can see why they have remained so impor- cam--cven if they may seem to us bizarre, folkloric, archaic. And one canalso understand to what point Aristotle himself is deeply dependent upon Plato. And chis establishes already what is called, boch in the customarysense and in the mathematical sense of the term, a hereditary trammissionof philosophers' properties. For, what takes place with Arisrode is a newversion in a sense of this triad of Plato's: oncology, psychology, cosmology.And it will be transmitted later on. In ocher words, for Aristotle, too, there is indeed necessarily an inti-mate relationship berween oncology, psychology, and cosmology. ForAristotle, too, che genuine being [/'fm vtritabk] of something, of a being[d'un tto:int]. its essence, ics owia, is the eidos; it's the Form. Only-tremendous differences with respect co Plato-he claims first of all thatthis eidos isn't separate, char it is not elsewhere, beyond. It is in this world.Aristode therefore eliminates as mere metaphors all of Plato's phrasesabout participation, communication of objects, particular beings [ttann On Pl:!to's Statesman

particuliers}, with che Forms. And on the ocher hand, he offers an ex-tremely deep and d~tailed analysis of this Form. Where Plato is contencco speak of eidi, of Forms, Ariscoclc says: Every being [ltant] includes fourprinciples, or four causes, or four clements:

• matter; • form in the narrow sense; • the final, effective cause; • and then he regroups these three elements into a general form,which is the thing's destination, its owia, what it was to be.

Nor should it be forgotten thar, for Aristotle, this owia, if ir is truly ul-timate, isn't definable either (chat's a bit secondary). Bue the kosmos isnothing other than these realized forms self-perpetuating themselves insublunary nature, or these eternal forms in ccles£ial nature. And ulti-mately there is only one form, only one single Being-being [itre-ltant].that is God, who is pure form without macter. But in fact this Being whois God, who is pure form without maner, cannot truly be known directlyby us; we deduce this Being that is God as a necessity of the existence ofnature. How do we know? Here again, Aristotle is right in the line of descentfrom Plato because what he says about knowledge is chat, when we speakof second-order knowledge, as can be said, or of what he himself calls lo-gos, rhe attribution of a thing, when we say something about something,then at that very moment we are using different methods, including alsoinduction, for example, which is justifiable up co a certain point. Aristo-tle knows very well what's at issue in relation to induction. But when what's at issue is the essence of a thing, chis essence cannotbe said through a definition; it cannot be grasped induaivcly. Ir is knownd.recrly through thought. This is what Aristotle affirms in the celebratedpassage about the psyche in De Anima (On the Soul): thought-nous----isalways true when it knows the owia of things, the to ti in einai, what theywere to be. But thought can be mistaken in ics attributions when it says tikata tinoJ, something abour something. This is to say that we have a sec~ondary domain in which there is more and less, true and false-a domainwhere we can know more or less and where we can be mistaken. Bur asfor the essences of things, nous grasps chem dircaly. There's not even anylogos. It doesn't reflect them discursively. Ir grasps them. Ir fixes chem inpl.1.ce. Ir sees chem. Smti"4r ofMarch 5, 1986 77

there are other passages in Aristotle, in the Zoological Treatises, 1 where hesays strangely that nous, thought, enters from the outside into the humansubject, whereas all the rest is produced by the living being l/'nrt vivant],by the human being. Aristotle never talks about rhe immortaHry of thesoul, but he n~erthdess says that nous enters thurathm, from the outside,"by the door," into the living being, because he cannot otherwise accountfor chis capacity of the hwnan subject to know the essences of things.

So, one can see, of course, why in Plato there is a theory of paradigms,that is to say char there are Ideas char organize being [/etrt'], that even or~ganiu being in the world. There is a kinship among beings [ltants]; onecan pass from one being [itant] to another since there's participation inhigher eidi. The same thing is found in Aristotle, since Aristotle chinkschat the owiai, the essences, are immanent in things. This can also, byway of consequence, furnish an ontological and cosmological grounding,if I may say so, for induction. And so what is sa.id with Plato and Aristotle oudines the framework forwhat will come afterward, including also its negation in the history ofphilosophy. That is to say, there are some subde elaborations well after-ward; there are some attempts to break up [casser] chis articulation of on-cology-cosmology-psychology. That isn't the case, I might add, withDescartes and Leibniz., who make some modifications but who keep chisunity of psychology-cosmology-oncology. But there arc some acccmpts inmodern times to break up this unity: Spinoza breaks it up while keepingonly an ontology, in a sense; Kam breaks it up while keeping only a psy-chology and while rejecting the idea chat there might be an oncology anda cosmology. Of course, he's speaking on a transcendental level, but itboils down co chc same thing. And for Fichte, it's che same. A5 for Hegel,he returns co an Aristotelian model. And Heidegger, to arrive ac the end of chis course, notes that in effectall of these philosophies belong to the same circle, that this circle had notyet been closed by the pre-Socratics-which boils down to saying, on theocher hand, that with Plato there is indeed a second creation of philoso-phy, and chis is what we truly mean by philosophy-and that there is anexhawtion of chis circle. And chis exhaustion-with some real conse-quences for the principal ideas chat have emerged with the circle, like rea- On Pl:!to's Statesman

son fur example, rationaliry-leads to desolation and leads into the

desert. It is in chis sense chat there is an end of philosophy; it is in chissense, too, char NieliiSche's "The desert is growing" can be taken up again.But what there also is is the fact that Heidegger cannot philosophicallyget out of chis circle but simply can note chat a circle has closed upon it-self. (He finds himself enclosed in it-and proclaims chat it is dosed.) Now-and we shall finish today on chis point, before returning co theStatesman-what we are saying is precisely chat it is the question of being[de /'itrt'] that is co be taken up again, and it is to be taken up again in thethreefold arciculation of psychology, cosmology, and ontology. But there'ssomething else in thought-something else chat, moreover, can cake in[rnglobtr] chis inherited circle and can, up to a certain point, account forit. And chis resumption can occur only on the basis of the observationchat being creates itself, chat it is temporality, and chat the subject createsitself in being as capacity to know being; and not only chat, moreover, butthose arc the ocher dimensions of subjectivity of which I spoke. This ca-pacity to know being is based upon the capacity of the subject-and here,I am speaking of the subject in the most general sense, both psychical aswell as social-historical and individual-to rc-crcacc, to create anew theoriginary matrices in and through which the self-creation of being hasoccurred. That's what is going on, roughly speaking, in the following enigma: Wecannot know anything if we don't already know it; and if we 2.lreadyknow it, how the devil would we know it? The solution co chis enigma isas follows: When we know, when we learn, we are not copying re2.licy, be-cause that's an absurdity. We reinvent reality, and chis is a reality chatproves to be congruent in w co a pan of the reality that exists. Or, rather:We reinvent an imaginary schema chat proves to be congruent with a partof really given being. That's the response to the problem of Plato in cheMeno and of all philosophy. And it's upon that basis chat we can recom-mence our philosophical efforts and can exit from the circle of inheritedthought. We shall continue next time by putting a rapid end to this scory of thethird incidental point about the paradigm, then by treating the other in-cidental points chat arc of relacively secondary imporc. And we shalllaunch into two {of the! digressions: (1) on the myth of Cronus and (2)on the essence of the statesman.Seminar of March 12, 1986

IV. The Eight Incidental Points (Continued)

lncitkntttl Point Three, on the Paradigm (contin~d)

I would like to take up again the idea we finished with the last rimeapropos of this much talked-about third incidental point from Plato'sStatesman concerning the nud for a paradigm in order co understand, inparticular, objects of thought that have no materiality. We have traveled through many labyrimhs, buc the important poinr,che reason why I insisted upon chis incidental point, is rhe necessity it re-veals in Plato's thought, and thereby in the whole of philosophical thought since Plato, up to and including Heidegger, namely, the need toset [ordonnl'rJ knowledge-therefore, this faculty of the soul; therefore,this activity; therefore, chis nature of the soul (the psyche)-in line withbeing in che most abstract sense, on the one hand, and with the tota.liry ofBeing-being, the cosmos, the world, on the other. This articulation of apsychology with a cosmology and an ontology is quite marked in Platoand in Aristotle, and it is marked, too, in many philosophers of moderntimes. Sometimes, as is in Kant, it can be the object of a denial, with con-sequences that arc, to say the least, aporctic and, to rell the truth, absurd.I mean by this that the Kantian attempt--or, at least, that of Kant's firstsuccessor, Fichte-co say something about our knowledge while lookingsolely at the subject of this knowing activity and while eliminating che ob-ject--daiming that as such it plays no role and that therefore this subjectcould function in any world whatsoever-obviously ends in aporias. For Plato, there is, therefore, chis common positing of p~chology, cos-Bo On P/Jto's Statesman

mology, and ontology. The soul knows. Why? Because, qua immaterialsoul. it has a1ready known. Once embodied, it has fallen imo a kind ofsleep from which it--can be awakened. Once awakened, it remembers, andwhat it recalls arc the tidi, the Forms, which it has known from aJ] eter-nity. Next, it's to the extent that the ltosmos itself, existing reality, the to-tality of beings [itants] is composed by parricipation in these Forms-that is, ro the extent that there is chis much calkcd-about panicipation orcommunication, mtthrxis and koinOnia-thac the soul can know some-thing of chis real world in which it finds itself (temporarily, moreover). The articulation is exaccly the same in Aristoclc. For, although the po-sitions, the contents of the theses, are different, the main lines arc thesame. Here, too, there is a soul. A,:-, seen in the treatise De Anima or im-plicitly in the Metaphysics, this Aristotelian soul is the faculty by whichone apprehends the senses, and in that it can never be mistaken. Aristotlesays this explicitly: When the soul considers the data of the senses, it al-ways speaks truly; it possesses the truth. Ir is mistaken only when it is op-erating in logos, in Aristotle's sense, that is to say, in the complexion of sig-nifications, in the attribute, in what he calls the ti ltata ti.nos, sayingsomething against something, chat is to say, about something, that is tosay, of something. It's in this reasoning part of the soul that error can befound, if one excludes the imagination-which, for Aristotle (the first tohave posited chis principle) can also be a source of error: "The sensationsare always true, whereas most data of the imagination are false" (De An-ima 3.3.428). 1 For Aristotle, the knowabilicy of something rests upon the fact chatthere are ousiai, essences, and that these essences contain somethingltatholou, something universal. That's the ontological level. And at thesame rime-and this is the cosmologica.l a.spect-Aristotle rejects, with adisparaging remark directed against Plato, all chose stories about com-munication and participation; for, as he says, that's not saying anything;ir's just "using poetic metaphors ... The ousiai-thc eidos, the Form-arcnot separate from real beings [des itre1 riels]. from the real beings [destrams rteh] of which they are the forms; they are immanent. There is onlyone single form that would be a form without matter; this is the thoughtof thought, what he calls God, the thought that itself thinks itself and thatconrains no matter. fu regards material objects, there is, for Aristotle, apossibility of induction precisely becawe, when the soul considers things,it isn't facing, as it does so for many Moderns (for Kant, let's say), pure Seminar ofMarch 12, 1986 81

unformed matter. It isn't placed opposite a chaotic diversity. Ir is placed in

front of objects whose essences are inherent, immanent co rhem, so chat there is a certain ontological grounding for induction, although Aristotle obviously knows that induction doesn't permit one to reach rigorous con- clwions. He knows very well that every conclwion, made on the basis of a limited number of examples out of the tocalicy of a species, can be de- ceptive and contains no necessity. But, if there is something that permits one to know on the basis of the real, it's the owia's immanence in rhe real; it permits one to begin reasoning about what is, co begin co know whac is. It is therefore this relative unity, chis organized articulation among the psyche, beings [ks ltants], and what genuine Being (to ti in einai) is, chat for Aristotle also permits one co know not only objects but also even, ul- timately, thought. This relative unity gives us chis limited but secure knowledge of the world-limited because we are forever separated from what is the supreme essence, the pure form, absolute nous, pure activity, the 41:tu.s purw, which is separate from the world and considers only it- self. (This is perhaps the only way of chinking a deity that wouJd have a certain philosophical dignity. All the other gods, monorheiscic or not, who busy themselves with the trivialities of this world are very bizarre, very strange gods.) This articulation is still there in many modern philosophers. It is ex- plicit, for example, in the thoughts of people like Leibniz and Hegel, but it is also rather marked in Descartes (passing by way, there, of a god who creates the world, of course). It is interrupted in the subjectivist current of modern philosophy, in Kam-but already beforehand in Hume-whoconsiders only the subject but who remains caught up in this problematic that can be called the deficiencies in Kant's thought, namely, the aporias chat led che German Idealists to go beyond him lacer on. These aporiasarc marked by chis articulation and by chis circle. In the end, Heideggerdidn't do anything ocher than note that in effect chis history of philoso-phy from Plato until Husserl belongs to che same circle; chat this circlehad not yet-this is true-been locked tight at the rime of the pre-So-cratics; and that it was locked tight for the first time with Plato (for mypart, I was celling you that with Plato there was, in effect, a second cre-;uion of philosophy). Bur for Heidegger, chis circle is exhausted; its his-torical destiny has been co bolster chis modern technical approach, mod-ern rationality, the modern scientific outlook lctttt' tt'chniciti, rationaliti,1cit'nt,jidtl modnnt'J"], char is rn say, co create chis desert, this absence, this On Plntoi Statesman

<clip,e of Being and of th< gods. To that extent, Heid~r h_ims<lf r~-mains caught up in this circle: h< cannot air from It ph1losoph1cally; hesimprisoned therein 2nd can do nothing other than call his own impris--onmcnt the "withdrawal of Being, n the historical withdrawal of Being. Can one exit from this circle? In my view, one can exit from it to theextent that the qu<srion of being [tk n... J is to be taken up again, to th<extent that there is another field of thought rhat encompasses this inher-ited circle. And the condition for exiting therefrom is to smash [c4.Uer]this central idea that holds these major pieces together, these three arcs ofthe inherited circle's circumference. One must smash the idea of determi-nacy-that is to say, of being as being-determined-and sec again thatbeing is creation, that the psyche and the social-historical arc themselvescreations. One must sec that the problem of induaion is in a sense illposed; th< third part, th< oosmological dimension, is ill posed because thequestion is not only to note that all empirical knowledge is uncertain buralso to start from this incontestable &er-or dsc one must stop talking- chat th<rc is empirical knowledg<. There is empirical knowledge alreadywhen I discuss with someone, for that supposes that I accept his exis- tence. This existence is not an a priori idea; it's a &ct nourished by expe- rience, and this someone is thereby the testimony of scnsorialiry and hasa weight that is unimpeachable. Bur of course, we always remain with the problem of the form of this knowledge. We cannot say that we borrow rhe forms of intuition, space and time, or categories from this scnsorialiry, from this experience, or from whatever else on the outside. We arc there- fore obliged to note that what wc do-and nor qua singular individuals,qua singular souls, but qua individuals participating in a social-historicalworld-is recreate as thought-form what is; wc re-create as thought-formwhat, in a sense and already in an immanent fashion, is as formable. We have the form of the one, and it is absurd ro say, like some matcri-aJists, that we extract numbers from things. I do not sec, indeed, how onecan extract numbers from rhings; in order char we might extract anythingwhatsoever from a thing, one mwt first posit this thing as one and sev-eral, and posit that there can be one and rwo and three ... , and so on. Iris we who posit it, but that has some hold upon reality. Things are sU<hchar they can be counted; they arc such that one can separate them. Herc,we must come back to the great mind of Aristotle: Things arc such thatone can ,cparatc them sufficiently as to need and to usage, and suffi-ciently as to the perspective within which one is considering them at the S.minar ofMarr:h 12, 1986

moment one is speaking. We aren't separated from the Earth because: at

every moment biUions of neutrinos arc coursing through us; but, as to theneed and wage of discussing, of eating, or of doing whatever else, we arcsufficiently ~paratcd from the totality of the cosmos, for example, and wearc sufficiently separated in certain regards relative to knowledge; rhat is,our lack of distinction in relation to the surrounding gravitational field orto the neutrinos that are coursing through us is nor of relevant interest assoon as we come to consider, for example, the Unconscious or someone'sthought. We arc therefore: obliged to posit as an ontological thesis that what is iscnsidiublc, 2 but that it is not so in an overall way; one cannot make anoverall system of it. This is what is shown in the history of our knowledgeand also as we gain access to different strata of this total Being-being bymeans of what can be called che creative imagination of individuals andthe creative imagination of societies, which reposit, reinvent-which re-create-what in a sense is already there in order to be able to think it.This goes along with the idea chat these different strata of what is, forwhich we have need ro posit, to invent, to create new schemata each timein order to be able to think them, are themselves emergences, sudden ap-pearances [su1X""srmmts] of total Being-being; chat Being is therefore al-ways co-be [a-em], or is creation. It's a paradoxica1 idea that there is ulti-mately a truth-that is to say, chat there is in a certain way a truth in themost naive, the most traditional sense of the term---qua adequarion, quaa certain correspondence of what we think with what is (which doesn'tmean a total and exact reproduction, an Abbi/dung, but a sufficient cor-respondence), and chat, ac the same time, in order co arcain this truth, weare obliged co invent it. But chat's the way it is. I was quite pleased to dis-cover that this idea had already been formulated (I don't know whetherothers had already stated it) t,~· rhe great William Blake in The MarriageofHeavm and Heil. One of the "Proverbs 'Jf Hell" says: What is now proved was once only imagin'd_.~

This is a dazzlingly beautiful phrase and at the same rime a banal one charstates an obvious truth: You can never prove anything if you haven't firstimagined it as che possibilicy of a statement that is to be proved. Onceagain, the poet is prophet, as another pol'.t said. This is, in a sense, thewhole history of human knowledge: imagining things and then provingchem by pure reasoning, for ex.ample, and rendering thinkable something On Pl.at3's St~tesman

that doesn't depend upon us, something that is real, that is to say, real inthe sense of what resists, what isn't pliable ac will to our schemes ofthought.

I now come back to the Stawman. You wiU recall that, apan from thetwo definitions, there were eight incidental points and three major di-gressions. We had already spoken of the first three incidental points, thefirst being species and parts, the second being the vicwpoinr of division,the third being paradigms and clements.

The fourth incidmtal point, in 28ui. bears upon the diJtinction between the arts ofthe proper cause and the arts ofthe comil4nt cause.

a question of the "incidental" or "accidental" cause, as is said in the Latintranslations, which are bad. It's the cause that happens to ..go along with."That's what sumbainei signifies. This distinction isn't very interesting. except that it hdps us to see, hereagain, that, when one wants to make a distinction, what today is con-temptuously called metaphysics, ontology, the problems of thought al-ways rise up again [resurgirsmt}. Plato wants co distinguish the art of theproper adventing [de /'a.dvenir propre] of the thing from chat which simplyaids in the production of the thing; and in order co do this he is obliged,obviously, to introduce a postulate, the postulate of substance. There is anactivity that produces the thing itself, qua substance, inasmuch as it is it-self and not something else; and then there's a whole series of causal linksthat culminate in che production of this thing. All these causal links canbe separated our, carved up, so as to distinguish what produces the thingitself, and this is the principal cause concerning to pragma auto, die Sacheselbst {the thing itself}. As a nearly exhaustive example of the ~cond case,there are the arts that produce the instruments used for the production ofa thing. We could follow him here, but there aren't, as one knows, jwt in-snuments. The object is itself a separate object; it is something. It's thehorse saddle, the sword. There's the an of he who forges the sword-that's the art of the principal cause-but there is also, for example, the artof he who has manufactured the hammer with which the blacksmithworks. 'Where docs the production of means scop and where does che pro- SnniMr ofMarch 12, 1986

duction of the object itself begin? If you reflect upon it a little while,you'll see that, any way you look at it, the cut is arbitrary and that, evenif one posits the substance of the manufactured object, that of rhe sword,for uamplc, one doesn't know where one is supposed ro cut; for, in orde'.'rto forge the sword, the metal has to be laid down somewhere; one needsfire and a heap of other ingredients. You'll find all these problems later onin economic theory, in the theory of value: What is the object and whatcontributes to adding value co the object? I mention all chis in order roshow you how much basic thought, the fundamental a prioris, come inroplay, even when it comes to rdarivdy secondary questions.

The fifth incidental point (283c-285c} concerns the difference between rel- atiw measure and absoluu measurt.

It's funny to see how chis incidental point crops up [Jurgit]. TheStranger asks at one point: Have we made too many detours and distinc- tions? Aren't we circling around the thing coo much, rather than tackling it itself? Aren't we taking too many circuitous paths? Here, we're smackdab in Socratic-Platonic dialogue: Yes, but too much in relation to what?What is too much? When does one talk too much? We then immediatelyhave the general question: When is there excess, huperboli, and when is there a defect [difout]. elkipJiJ? And this applies not only to discourse butto anything else:. fue there too many stars in the sky? ls the Ninth Sym-phony coo long? Do you earn too much money or not enough? fue theretoo many books written by human beings, or not enough? Well, saysPlato, there's an art, "metretics" (metritilti), which is the art of measure.And here, immediately, he introduces the capital distinction (it's nor justby chance that philosophy has been condemned to turn around the Pla-tonic wheel for twenty-five centuries!) between two different sorts ofmeasure: relative measure and absolute measure. The idea of absolute measure is already a paradox. But let's begin withrelative measure: there is a relative measure in the sense that I can say thatthis man is very tall physically in relation to an average height. But onecannot remain at chis relative measure, says Plato, because, if every meas-ure were relative, one could never say that something was too large or toosmall. For, as large as a thing may be, there can be a larger one; and assmall as a thing may be, there can be a smaller one. The very small thingwill still be very large in relation co a thing that is !much! smaller than it.86 On Plat,)$ Sbtcsman

And a thing that is very large will be small in relation to something larger.Careful, now. All this is very strong, very rigorous, and if you accept it,the Platonic nap ddks upon you. All these measures (one cannot livewithout measuring, without saying that there is rhc large and the small)arc relative. Thar's obvious. But if every relative measure presupposes ameasure that isn't relative, you necessarily end up with the necessity-inorder 10 think, in order 10 speak-you end up with the idea that there issomething that is measure: of the rest, nor rclarivcly, but that is absolutemeasure, that is norm, that is, therefore, a Form, an ndos. There, you canno longer get out of it; there is necessarily, if you want to talk, somethingthat is nonrclarivc measure, measure that fixes in place the true advent,the right advent, the correct advent of a thing independently of all rela-tivity and that says: That's how such a thing is to be. And if, as is obviousin a certain fashion, we can say of a poem or of a piece of music that it istoo long, we arc really saying it's too long as to, relative to, something, butwe don't say it in relation to the average size of mwical pieces. For exam-ple, there arc some symphonies of Bruckner and even of Mahler that arctoo long, but they aren't too long becawc they arc longer than chose ofBeethoven. And they can even not be longer. They arc too long for whatthey are. There arc poems that arc too long and chat don't contain morethan twenty lines! But rhc /litu/, with its fifteen thousand lines, is perhapsnot too long (even though the Romans were already saying that good oldHomer ... ). The symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler arc not too longin relation to an absolute measure-we're no longer within the measura-ble-but in relation to the form of the symphony. But there is no ab-solute form of the symphony-thar's the paradox of the work of an-andnill lcss an external form/ norm of the poem. A sonner is obligarorily "4-4-3-3," but poems rhat aren't sonnets arc written, too. We have no nu-merical norm for the length of a poem, but we have a norm of a beauti-ful poem, in a sense. Do we truly have this norm of a beautiful poem, thisform of the musical piece that has exactly the right dimensions (ks di-mensions qu'i/ foutJ, as one is so often certain about with great music,whether it's a matter of classical mwic or a jam session~ This piece itselfincludes its norm; it brings into the world (ii fllit vmir au mondeJ its ownnorm, and it's in relation to this norm that it itself reveals to us that it isperfect, and not in relation to something from outside. This norm char itbrings to the world [qu'i/ apportr au mondrJ is a specification of some-thing we cannot define, which is precisely the form of the beautiful, thebeautiful itself. Seminar ofMtirch 12, 1986

We arc reaching this other part of Plato's reasoning. Plato therefore hasto introduce the distinction between a measure that is relative and an·other that is not and that he calls the mmion. We really mwt see how theideas and notions arc being woven together. 'When we say that a poem isexactly what it should be [u qu'il faut]. neither too long nor coo short,relative measure is being implied, but in a subordinate way, namely, Iknow that Beethoven's Sevmth Symphony lases so long. There is this di·mension, and in relation to it both the composer and the listener have aposition, an Einsullung, an impostar.ione. This is to say that chc SeventhSymphony, for example, cannot be stretched out further. There is there·fore a dimension of relative measure, but it's there only co instrument theembodiment of a form that, itself, is not relative to something else, that isrelative only co beauty, to the form. That's what Plato caHs the metrion.We therefore have two "metretic" ans, two arts of measure, of mensura·tion: the quantitative ans and those that concern quality, which Plarocharacterizes by using several terms: the metrion, which means quitestrictly that which obeys a measure; the metron, chat's the measure;metrion, that's the measured in the two senses of the term, the measuredas past participle and the measured as adjective (wise, prudent). There'salso {the Greek) prrpon, what ought to be [« qu'i/ faut]. the GermanSo/Im, or the {Greek) d,on (what should be[« qu'i/faut], what is fittingor suitable), or kairos, the propiciow, appropriate instant, and rhe instantin relation co measure. This idea of kairos is quite astonishing and, at thesame time, very profound; an act, a thing, will be measured in this, thatit comes truly in its time. Herc, we muse chink of medicine or of war,which the Greeks never lost sight of: it's the act chat comes at the momentwhen it is necessary [au mommt oU ii four], rhe part of the phalanx thatadvances just at the necessary momenc [Juste au moment oU ii fout]. Hercagain, one sees this sore of relativity char isn't a quantitative relativity; it isrelative co a result chat muse be brought about [qu'il faut faire advmir}. There is already in chis incidental point the strange affirmation-strange, because here, there's a return co something quantitative and rcla·civc-thac the mem·on, therefore something qualitative, is a midpoint[milieu] between two extremes. And chis is what later on, in Aristocle'sNichomachean Ethics, yielded virtue as metrion, as the happy medium[Juste milieu], an expression rhat has been debased with a petit·bourgeoismeaning, but chat isn't what was intended by Placo and Aristotle. Plato adds, in a relatively imporcant passage, that everything that de-pends upon an participates in measure. And that's so true for him chat,88 On Plato's Statesman

in the Timaeus, the demi urge, the manu&cturing god [/e dieu fobricattur]himself can fabricate the world only by going around measuring all thetime. And here one1ccs why rhe world is relatively perfect, perfect a.smuch as is possible. On the one hand, within itself, it is made as much asis possible according to measures, and, on the other, it has the right form{la bonne forme) not quantitatively but because it is the most perfect imi-tation possible of the form of the eternal living being. There we have theabsolute measure of the world; and in chat sense, the world is good [biml,because you have this form relative to which it is perfect.

Incidmta/ point six states that the trur goal ofthe dialogue iI dialectical exercise alone.

But this is a bit of trickery on Plato's part. We've already talked aboutthis. It is maintained here that the genuine object of the discussion is notto define the statesman but quite rather to train oneself [s'aercer] in mat-ters of dialectic. And chat isn't true: there is a first level where he dealswith the statesman; there is then a second level where, in effect, what re-ally matters is the dialectic, philosophical remarks: "It's because of chischat we are saying all that we are saying" (286a). But in fact, at a thirdlevel, the genuine objective of the dialogue really remains not to give adefinition of the statesman-since there is, in a sense, no genuine defini-tion of the statesman in this dialogue-but, rather, to prepare for the def-inition of the city lacer described in the Laws and to sketch out che gov-ernors' role in that city.

Incidental point srom (304b-d) spealts ofthe subservient arts of

stawmamhip.

Therefore, those of rhetoric, strategy, and so on. Herc, moreover, Plato

gives a good definition of rhetoric-good, that is, in relation to himself-when he says chat it is the arr that persuades the crowd, peistikon plithous,by means of a mythology, dia muthologias, and not through didachi, dis-cursive reaching, dialectic, if you will: "Well, to which science shall we at-tribute then the virtue of persuading the masses and crowds by recount-ing fables ro chem instead of instructing them?" (Eiev· Tiv1 tO 1t£.lcrt11COvotlv cin:o&oooµEv E1t1<1'C'Tlµu 1tA'l8cJ~ tE !Cal OxAOu 6tCl µu&A.O)'tac; au.aµfl 6tU 6t6oxfic;; 304(1). This is quite beautiful, because that's what Platohimself is doing all the time. Thus, he's rebuking the Sophists all the time,and he's the greatest sophist. He's rebuking the rhetoricians all the time, Snninar ofMarch 12, 1986

and he's the greatest rhetorician. He's rebuking the poets and the tragedi-ans all the time. and he has an absolutely fantastic sense of dramaturgy.He's defining himsdfhere, bee.awe he is peistiltos (persuasive) through thisextraordinary combination of didachi, discursive teaching, and mutholo-gia, with all these myths, the myth of the cave and the myth of Er in theRrpublic or Aristophanes' myth in the Symposium. There is this weavingtogether of the poetic, mythopoiecic demenc and the reasoning and ar-gumentative clement, which has made for Plato's political pocency-politica1 in the sense of domination in the sphere of ideas.

lncidmtai point eight bears on the distinction ofthe kinds of virttw.

And this brings us back a bit to the story about measure. Bur what is quite striking here is that the dialogue has in fact ended in 305e, that is to say, chat there is an entirely satisfactory definition of the statesman-it's he who weaves together the city. {W'hat there is to be woven together in rhe city was already explained at length and in great detail: on the one hand, there are the different material ans, the productive arcs, which are necessary for the life of the city; on the other, there are the ans that re- semble statesmanship, like rhetoric and strategy, but that have to be sub- ordinated to statesmanship.) Bue at chis moment the Stranger from Elea scratches his head and says that there's still another thing. There are other things that are to be com-posed by statesmanship: these are the pans of virtue. We end up herewith this strange idea chat Aristotle rook up again in the NichomacheanEthier-that something chat, in itself, participates in the nature of virtuecan, in being excessive, lead to results that aren't desirable, char don't per-tain to virtuous action. One muse know how to combine souls that havethis virtue in excess with souls that have a shortage [defaut] thereof, onthe one hand, as these souls are given in the individuals who live in thecity and, on the other, if this is possible, by the crossbreeding of individ-uals in the city, making mixed marriages between those families whosemembers are noted for their crazy recklessness [tlmiriti folk] and thosefamilies whose members arc noted for an excessive prudence, and so on. This sort of appendix, which undoubtedly aims at preparing the wayfor the Phikbus, appears as the principal compositional quirk [bizarrerielof the Suzusman, which includes a good number of chem-no fewer thanfourteen! This is quite biz.acre, first of all because it appears after the com-pletion of a formal definition and secondly because it introduces a con-90 Un Pl.tttoi Statesman

sider.nion chat it exemplifies on rhc case of one and only one vinuc. Aris-rode later cried ro exemplify it on the basis of all the virtues, but that's stillquire arrificial. Plato annoc exemplify ir on the basis of anything ocherthan this story about an excess of temerity and an excess of reserve or pru-dence. Ir's in relation to rhis that there is shortage "by exc.css" and shonagc"by lack [pardifaut)." And it's in relation to this that he brings up his n<Wdcfinicion of the statesman as someone weaving together nor only all therest bm also the pares of rhc soul and chc individuals who possess in ex-cess the faculties whose noncxccssive existence would constitute a virtue. One may ask oneself what chat's doing in there. The only answer con-sists perhaps in crying to reconstitute, from within, che thought processof a great thinker. But here we're on highly slippery ground, a groundupon which interpreters regularly fall and smash rheir faces. It can be saidthat a minimum condition for success would be to be oneself a greatthinker: indeed, how is a mere professor of philosophy or of history goingto be able to grasp why Plato at some point, with all that behind him al-ready and some new problem ahead of him, was led to think such andsuch a thing? One can hardly sec the difference between that professorand a musical ignoramus who tried to explain why, starting in 1817, Beethoven changed tack. With these reservations, then, and the due modesty, I dare to haz.ard an interpretation: I believe that this addition at the end of the Statesman ceases to be bizarre if one sees it as a kind ofbridge toward the Phikbus, just like a series of ocher things in the States- man. The Phikbu.s is a dialogue of utmost imponance. There, Placo aban-dons his initial theory of virtue, his identification of virtue with knowl-edge. He adopts therein another conception chat really has a hugeamount to do with this blending, the mixed, moderation, the possibilityof compromising [composer]. In this conception, he finally grants thatpleasure as such is not necessarily to be banished from a vinuous life, thatin the virtuous life there also has to be a place for pleasure-upon thecondition chat it be put in its place. In this train of thought of a man who must have been around seventyyears old and writing his last works, who w:as approaching this ocher con-tinent chat was his final philosophy, the philosophy of the mixed, it is un-derstandable that with the Statesman, Plato was preparing a kind ofbridge toward the Phikbus and a conception of life wherein virtue is nolonger rigorous knowledge and pleasure doesn't come solely from thetheOria of the Ideas but can also come quire simply from human life. Snninar ofMarr:h 12, 1986 91

And we now broach the three digressions. These will keep us occupiedno doubt for ar least two seminars, in addition to the end of chis one.

V. The Three Digressions

The first digression recounts the myth of the reign of Cronus, the al-ternation of two great cosmic periods (268d-277b). The second digres-sion bears upon the form of political regimes. As for the third, the prin-cipal one, it aims at demonstrating that science alone defines thestatesman, but at the same rime it ends up abandoning chis definition-chis is the key momcnr of the paradox of the Stausman. Plato heredemonstrates in the most absolme way that science alone defines thestatesman and char, if there is a statesman who possesses this science,everything dse subsides, rhe laws, the patria, and so forth. Bur at thesame time, he is telling w that this isn't possible, that this is coo ab-solute---that, therefore, one must undertake what he calls the "secondnavigation." In a sense, the second digression, on the form of the differ-ent regimes, can be considered so closely tied up with chis third digres-sion as to be a subdivision of it.

Fi11t Digression: The Myth ofthe Reign of Cronus

I remind you what it's about. Suddenly, the Stranger hesitates over thedefinition of the statesman as pastor of human .Rocks with which oneended up, and he asks Young Socrates whether he recalls an old story inwhich there were divine pastors and the world turned in the opposite di-rection from the one in which it turns now. In fact, Plato is reworkingthree old legends here:

• first of all, the myth concerning Atreus and Thyestes, according to

which, at one point, Zcw, angered because Thyestes had cheated, re-versed [inversr] the course of the sun and, everything being regulated byche sun, events began to .Row backwards [a' ll'nvrrs]; • second legend is chat there was a reign of Cronus, which is generallyassociated in popular tradition with the idea of a golden age; • che third legend is chat human beings were in the old days not pro-duced by each other, via sexual reproduction, but sprouted from theeanh, really coming our of it, and thus were gfgmeis {earrh-bornl. On P/atn'I Statesman

So, he starts from these three legends. The legend of a golden age is cer-tainly universal. Legends like the one that men sprouted from the eartharc certainly to be found in many spots (in the Old Testament, it's &omearth that Adam is made}, like, moreover, the story-found in othermythologies---of the reversal [/'inversion] of the course of rime. These arenot exclwively Greek themes; they belong to rather universal imaginaryschemata in the humanity of olden times. Here's a quick summary of the content of the myth. Plato says that thehistory of the universe, of all that is, always goes successively through twoopposite phases. There is a phase that would be the truly direct phase. Letus not forget that philosophy truly is the world turned inside out [a' l'm- llt'rs]. Plato already says chis himself: che truth of philosophy is what mendo not see. And what they do see is, for the philosopher, but illusion. Weare living in a phase of the history of the world in which the normal thing is for human beings-and also all other living beings--to be born smalland young, grow up and grow old, and, finally, die, then disappear. And perhaps that is, in our conception of things, tied up with a certain way inwhich the universe turns, a direction in which the heavenly vault rotates. Now, says Plato, this is jusc the reverse phase, the reign of Uus: chis iswhat happens with the world when the god {in question} abandons it to its fate. What happens, then, when the god abandons the world to itsface? Well, at chat moment the world begins to turn the way it is turning now, human beings begin to reproduce and to have young, the course of time heads in this direction, from birth coward old age, and the world runs itself (se dirigt lui-mhne]. But in running itself, the world cannothelp but become, little by little, unbalanced, the disorder k~ps on grow- ing, entropy increases. This is a very old idea in humanity, and it's whatwe caJI the second law of thermodynamics. When ArlStotle speaks of rimein the Physio, he states, Pas chronos eltstatiltos, every sort of time is "ec-static" in the sense of desrrucrive, which makes things exit from theirform. 4 In this sense, it's quite rightly, he says, chat people say that everykind of time is ecstatic, corruptive, destructive. But then, with his usualrigor, Aristotle goes over the popular saying: Although in truth it has tobe said chat it's not time qua time that destroys things but, rather, thethings themselves that arrive at their destruction, ac their decomposition;and chis sumbainei in time, it happens that this occurs in time, that irgoes, chat it coincides, it "comits" with time, and chat's the reason why itis sa.id char time corrupts things. Smrinar ofMarrh 12. 1986 93

We are therefore living in the phase where the world, left to icsdf, isheading toward its own corruption. And when this corruption reaches asort of maximum, a point where a god-who is no doubt other thanCronus or Zeus-chinks that things can no longer continue like that, chegod then takes back his helmsman's post, goes back to steering [rtprrndrela dirl'crionJ affairs, and brings the course of the world back co its truecourse (which for us would be a reverse course). Starring at that moment,the heavenly sphere begins to turn in the other direction; all the processeswe experience unfold in the reverse direction from the one we arc used co.Human beings come ouc of the earth as old men, with white hair-per-haps even with no hair at all-and, as rime passes, their hair grows darker,they arrive at marurity, start to look younger, become adolescents, growshorter; and when they become very small, they return to the earth. AJIother processes unfold in the same fashion. That period is the reign ofCronw; that is the reign of Cronus. The god himself directs (dirige] thecourse of the world and, via subaltern gods, watches over all maners andconducts things as they should be [comme ii faut]. And chis is also whypeople believe char, during chat period, men sprouted from the earth,were gigmeis, on the one hand, and that, on the other hand, life washappy. W'hy? Bccawe che god was himself watching over all existence, be-cause he had subordinate gods who acted as pastors of the different cate-gories of beings. For men, it's the god himself who tends chem---0e0c;EvEµEv aU'toU<; autOc; E1tlO"tatCOv (271e)-just as now men tend and pas-ture various categories of inferior animals. In the age of Cronus, therewere no politeiai {civil policies, constitutions, forms of government!, nocities, no exclusive marriagcs-1CT1lcr£.lc; yuvalJCOOv Ka\ 1taiOoov (posses-sions of women and children, 272a)-no childbirths. Once again, chisage of Cronus is a golden age; it's the myth of primitive communism butalso of a period of abundance. Men sprouted from the earth and recallednothing of what was there beforehand; they were born therefore withoutmemory {ibid.). Here we see the ambiguity of the story and, once again, Plato's ambi-guity, an ambiguity about which it may be asked up to what point it isvoluntary or not. Indeed, this golden age is purchased nonetheless by thefact chat people have no memory and recall nothing of what was there be-forehand. One could live, but in a kind of jungle in which the god pro-vided for everything. Can one think about that with nostalgia? Why don'twe live under the reign of Cronus? Is chat what our life should have been?94 On Plato's Statesman

First, Plato introduced this observation that people l,.:1.d no memory, andthen the Stranger from Elca explicitly poses the question: Is what peoplerecount true, chat life; under the reign of Cronus was the happiest of allpossible lives? He then makes a rather obvious fine distinction chat hand-icaps this legend and rhe idea of another course of the world in whichmen would be happy. If Cronus's nurslings (trophimoi [272b)) used theirtime, all the leisure they had, in order to do philosophy, it can then besaid that the rime of Cronus was truly a time of happiness. But if theylived simply to fill their bellies like beasts and to bathe in the sun, \.Veil, itwill be said char char wasn't a happy existence, and that we arc now en-joying a better fare. But, he says, let's leave char aside, because we cannot know. And hecomes to a son of anthropogony of present-day humanity. From time torime, the god gives up caring for the world, and then a catastrophe oc-curs; the contrary course resumes, and human beings are then as they aretoday: they have a sexual form of reproduction, live among savage beasts,and are obliged to pass from the state of nature to the state of culture.And, says Plato, men would have perished here had there not been gifts,divine donations, the fire of Prometheus, the arts of Hephaestus and ofhis companion in the ans--sunt~chnoJ (274d)-it's clearly Athena who isintended here. Ir is they who have endowed men with all chat, and menhave thus been able to manage to survive, to set up [constitwr) cities, andto live as we live today. Those are the main outlines of the myth. Plato returns upon several occasions to chis golden-age story, thisCronus-age story, and to this anthropogony, this son of "politeiogony"(creation of cities). This is the case in the law1 (676bff. and 713bff.), inthe Protagoras (321aff.), in the Republic (369b and 378b), in the Critia.,(109bff.), and so on. W'hy does he come back to ir? There is a traditionthat was taken back up very seriowly in the fifth century and counteredby the great thinkers of the fifth century. Hesiod, in Works and Day1 ,speaks already of the age of Cronus (lines 109-n). Upon the backgroundof an old tradition that contained this collective phantasm of an age ofabundance and happiness-a tradition recorded by Hesiod himself (linesn6-21)-Hesiod adds his own vision of times becoming harder andharder: with each new human generation, they deteriorate more and

To chis view a different one was opposed in the fifth century. That viewcould perhaps be called rational in the good sense of the term, and it is Snninar ofMarch 12, 1985 9l

nearly the same as ours today. This is an ~olutivc view and, let us say, it's practically speaking a view of humanity's self-constitution, ics sdf-crc-ation. The first person to whom this view can be attributed is obviously the great Democritus.' Protagoras, who was also from Abdcra, and ofwhom it is said that he heard Democritus speak, was without a doubtteaching similar things, and this is also (as we saw two years ago {in theseminar}) the thesis of Thucydides in the "archaeology" from the firstbook of The Peloponnesian ~,. What is the content of this thesis? It's chat there was an actual "state of nature," a state of savagery, a primitive state; chat, little by little, human beings invented. the ans, set up communities or extended chem, got or- ganized, and so on. This view is co be found in Thucydides, in rhc back- ground of the "archaeology." In Democritus, we have a long excerpt,which has been handed down to us by a Byzantine author, Johannes Tur- i.es, and comes to us from Democritus's Miluos Diakosmos [Bv3 Diels]. 6 In neither Democritus nor Thucydides is there any divine gift. When Plarn has Protagoras recount, in the dialogue of the same name, a myth of the birth of humanity, he is, of course, putting the divine donations given to men, the stories of Prometheus and Epimcthcus, and so on into the mouth of Protagoras (321aff.). But there's nothing like that in Dem- ocritus: humanity constitutes itself, creates itself, gives itself the arts, in-vents life in common, and docs so progressively. I have commented at length upon the fact that in Thucydides such progress concerns uniquely technique and material reality and has nothing to do with moral or evenciviliz.ational progress. In Thucydides, it's that people know better andbetter how to kill; in a way, it boils down to that. That is the fifth-century view, the Au/Jtliirung {Enlightenment} view.But in the fourth century, around Plato there were loads of reffccrionsabout reviving the theme of the golden age; there was a sort of back-tracking. The fourth century was a period of crisis, of decomposition ofimaginary significations, and so on. AJready, there were chc Cynics. Theytalked about a sort of state of nature and called for a return to the state ofnature. A well-known disciple of Aristocle, Dicacarchus, took back up thetheme of the golden age, combining ic with what had been found our inthe fifth century-it wasn't a mere return to Hesiod. There was a goldenage, he says, an age of nonwar, with no political Constitution; and ir was,;ir the same time, an age of scarcity. Here we sec a kind of ecological nos-talgia: it wasn't paradise on earth in the sense of abundance, bur men were On Pl.a:.o's StJtesman

beaer; they didn't make war; they weren't morally corrupt-this is an

ecological Rousseauism-but rhcy lived in difficult times, they ate grassesand wild fruits, and so on and so forth. Now, Plato takes back up this material that was there around him andclearly cries to give it another meaning; he fashions it as a myth but triesto make it function, in a way. The basic function of th.is myth is first of allto insert anthropogony, anrhropogenesis, into a process chat concerns thecosmic whole. This is to say chat we now live in a period in which therearc cities and in which the problem of statesmanship {kt politiqur] and ofthe statesman is raised because we belong to chis cosmic period duringwhich the world is left to its fate. It's for chis reason that the question ofstatesmanship is posed. In the other phase, during che age of Cronus, it'sthe god himself who takes care of us, who tends to us; and by way of con-sequence, the problem of policies [kt politiqU<] isn't posed. We must first of all sec the extraordinary combination, once again, ofthe audacity of Plato's imagination in the poetic sense and of the neargeometrical rigor with which, once certain postulates are made, he un-folds his story. The source elements are the three clements of the mythi-cal tradition: 1. the reversal of the direction of cosmic processes; 2. the reign of Cronus; 3. the sprouting forth of humans from the earth.

Let's take these, then, as postulates. And let's suppose, too, that there isa god who manufactures the world. This is obvious for Plato, who chinkshe has established it in the TimaNIJ. There, he explains how the god man-ufactures the world. Let us assume, as in the Timants and as he repeats itin the Statesman (269c-d), char the world is an incelligenr animal, that thetotality of the universe is a living being [u,r (tre vivant]. Let us assumeagain chat only that which is incorporeal can be eternally identical-which is also for Plato a self-evident fact, stated in 269<i of the Statesma,rand in the 1iman1s-that is to say, genuine being is the Ideas (eidl'J,which are eternally identical to themselves, the "eternally," moreover, notmeaning here omnitemporaliry bur atemporaliry, absence of rcmpora.lity,the fac~ rha~ the very question of a time isn't posed (this ui, rhis alwayJ,not being simply an atemporal always but a determination chat positsgenuine being as that which is identical to itself in all respects; that's whatchis very clearly means in the Timan1S). Snnina, ofMarr:h 12, 1986 97

There arc three principles in order that a world might be made. Thereis eternal being, which is the paradigm within which the world is to bemade. There is eternal becoming, that is co say, that which, at every mo-ment and in all respects, is other. Herc again, one can but admire the rad-icality of Plato's thought: when he is searching for the opposite of genuinebeing, he posits the always dissimilar (the always not being temporal),that is to say, that in which there is not a single moment-in the philo-sophical scnsc--of universality. There arc not even two points in thiseternal becoming that would be alike; you need only move a millimeterfor there to be dissimilarity in all respects. This is therefore the infinite ofdissimilarity, and what that is is matter, chat is to say, the cocally arational. In addition to these rwo demencs, a third clement is required, thedemiurge who constrains eternal becoming and makes it enter into aform that participates in the eternal form. But chis demiurgc-and in chisall Greek philosophy differs from Christian theology and even from what is implicit in the Old Testament-isn't all-powerful; he gives form to this matter ltata to dunaton, to the extent possible. This world has, therefore, to conca.in a corporeal part. It's for chis rea-son rhat it is; it is like matter formed by the demiurge. Being corporealand spatial, it can by itself only head roward disorder, the absence of reg- ularity. It doesn't suffice therefore to say that the demiurge would have manufactured it: he manufactured it lcata to dunaton in the likeness of theeternal living being, but this world is not the eternal living being; it con- tains matter and cannot, as such, but head toward the absence of regular-ity, disorder, destruction, and so on. Here, Plato stays within the Greek imaginary. But he isn't within theGreek imaginary inasmuch as, within chis imaginary, beginning at leastwith Hesiod, there is in the world formative spontaneity. For Plato, there isno formative spontaneity; formation is the work [iiruvre} of the demiurge.Matter has only a deformarive, desuucrive, or corruptive spontaneity. There is, finally, a fourth clement. It, too, is Greek. It's that there's alaw, mentioned again in the Stausman, of rapport, of balance, betweencreation and destruction, between genesis and phthora. This law is a ne-cessity, an impersonal ananlti. That is, the demiurge can do nothingabout it, because it's like chat. He can make this formation only in an ap-proximate fashion and not in an absolute fashion. Given that chere is !for Plato) no formative spontaneity of matter andchat there is only a disordered alteration, a destructive movement, the ex· On Pl1toi Starcsman

ternal ordering principlc-rhe demiurge--is necessary: a productive,

manufacturing god is needed, and the god produces this world, whichcannot be totallyJ)erfcct. This was subscquendy very important in the his-tory of thought, including the history of thought abour sociery. Indeed,it's taken up again explicitly in the St11ttsman, and it's one of rhe hiddenpillars of the dialogue as regards both the world and things human. There's another aspect of this whole affair. It's a sort of theod.icy on thepan of Plato, which consists in denying that the question of thcodicy canbe posed: If god has made the world and if you attribute to him these at-tributes-for example, omniscience, omnipotence, absolute goodness--how docs it happen that rhere is evil? There arc at this point several pos-sible responses. There is no evil; evil is an illusion. Or there's the Lcibnizian response: What appears ro us as evil is a necessary pan of aform that could be optimi?.Cd only as ... a geometrical surface, havingbumps and dents in ccnain places, and that's what makes its overall per- fection. Ir matters little which response is given. Plato himself takes theargument in reverse, and the price to be paid for denying the question of theodicy is to deny god's all-powerfulness. For him, there's the product's imperfection-this is for ccnain, and it's repeated in the StJZttsman-since, in the period of Zeus that we arc going through, things arc head- ing toward rheir corruption; this imperfection of the product is an im-perfection of the raw material, rhe primary matter in all senses of these terms, starting from which god has constructed the world. Bur contrary to the Christian God, jPlato'sl god has not made this raw material. He therefore isn't responsible for ir, and he can't do anything about it; this is the limit of his mighr. The world is therefore imperfect, because it has been manufactured in the absolute only ro the extent possible. This iswhat Aristotle was responding to already when he said that Plato's argu-menrs don't hold up, because it's incomprehensible that god, who is sup-posed ro be perfecr himself, would have produced, engendered, some-thing less perfect than himself. This is one of the reasons that makesArisrorle rhink of a god who is entirely separate, removed from the world. Bur rhe imponanr things, both as concerns Plato's arguments and theway in which the question is posed and as concerns the whole discwsionof thcodicy, arc the presuppositions for this discwsion. The world is per-fect or rhe world isn't perfect; but perfect in relation to what? You sec, ob-viously, how this entire discussion originates: one can say that saying rhat :sm,;,.,,, ofMarrh 12, 1986 99

something is perfect has meaning when it's a question of panicuJar ~ings

[trantJJ-nothing's perfect in this world, of course, but, well, a car isnearly perfect or else it's imperfect, badly made---when you insert some-thing into a system, into an articulated set of ends [articulation de jina/-itb] in which that something serves some purpose, in which that some-thing fits its goal [corrrspond 4 sonfinalitl], is adequate or else correspondsto the type its species determines, and so on. But when it comes to theworld, to total Being-being, what meaning can there be in discussingwhether or not it is perfect? Well, the meaning is obviously the anthro-pomorphic projection of the following wish: The world would be perfectif it corresponded to what we desire. All arguments advanced in rheodi-cies concern, of course, all those aspects of the world that are, that seem,that are judged by w to run contrary to what we would wish, what wouldmake us happy-though, let it be added, no one could damned well goand say what would actually make him happy, but that's yet anotherstory. (That's precisely part of the imperfection we can blame on theworld; we have been manuf.a.crured in such a way that we don't evenknow what could make us happy.) There is, then, chis sort of anthropomorphic underpinning to this en-tire way of posing the problem. Thar's already subjaccnt in Plato's choiceof che term agathon to designate in fact genuine being, that is to say, whatis even beyond, as he says, the essences and Ideas and what sustains them.Agathon is translated as ..good," the Larin bonum, bur the Greek etymol-ogy of agathon mwcn'c be forgotten. Agathon is what can be wished for;it comes from the verb agamai (that pleases me, I like chat), which has thesame root as agapO (I like), agapi. The agathon is the likable, what can bewished for, the desirable. By that I mean that the anthropomorphic con-tent of this supreme philosophical idea is given away already in the wordchoice: Genuine being is the desirable. That's Placo's idea; it isn't the Greek imaginary. For the Greek imagi- Jnary such as it was beforehand, being is neither agathon nor not agathon;it's neither desirable nor detestable. It's none of all that. Being is what it is;it is generative spontaneity and destructive spontaneity; it's genesis andphthora. It's chere from Homer up to and including the end of the fifthcentury. It's there in Democritus. And chis is the view that is broken upby Plato. He breaks it up in the following way: by repelling toward the ·'Beyond every element of activity and creative spontaneity. In face, thereIOO On P/.aro's Statesman

isn't any genuine creative spontaneity here:, since what the demiurge man-ufactures is manufactured in imitation of something that is given onceand for all-namely; the Forms and, in particular, the Form, the Idea, ofthe eternal living being. But in rhe end che former element is exportedout of this world, is separated off, and what is kept for this-here world--as one sees with the myth from the StateJman--is phthora, char is to say,erosion, corruption, destruction. In order char this phthora might bemaintained, contained within limits, it is necessary, each time it reaches acertain point, for the god to intervene again; he must reverse the course of things and, at the same time, set himself at the helm in order to steer theway they evolve. I rake up again the quasi theorem contained in chis myth with the pos- culates I stated at the outset-that is co say, the idea tha.t one must first make room for the three traditional elements, then that there is a god- demiurge, chat matter is not entirely formable ma.teer and tends by itself toward corruption. The world is corporeal; it has to move. Thar's a corol- lary. Ir's corporeal, that's settled. In reality, it's the aei gignesthai, that which is changing in all respects-therefore also with respect to spatial determinations. Therefore, the world has to move. As it is manufactured by god, ir is as perfect as possible; and therefore it has to move following the movement char is-in Plato's idea, bur it's an idea that isn't gratu- itous-since it lacks the absolute perfection that is immobility, rhe kind of movement that comes closest ro absolute perfection. This movement is circular movement. You can see clearly the profound-imaginary, if you will, but even logical, mathematical-kinship the circle has with identity: if an identity is not an immediate identity, ic is mediated. This is to say that, after having made a tour [uncertain cirOUt], I come back to my point of departure. This circular movement is identical because the circle is, among plane 6gures, the only one chat you could make slide over itself: in a rotation, all the points of the circle pass through a.II the other points and remain upon the same circle. You can't, by way of contrast, make a sinusoid, or a conic section, or an ellipse, and so forth, slide over itself. You can make a straight line slide over itself, but the basic drawback there is chat it's imaginarily infinite; it is therefore for a Greek-and for Plato, in parcicular-an imperfect figure. Therefore the world, if it docs move, can move only in a circle. As thegod has made the world (h<re, the proof is perhaps a bit less closely ar-gued), he hasn't made it in order to worry about it constantly. He Srminar ofMarch 12, 1986 IOI

launches it, therefore, and leaves it to follow its own movement. At thatmoment, the world and humanity-a certain part, at least-try to get or-ganized, to resist erosion and corruption, but they don't succeed. And theworld becomes more and more corrupt; it therefore travels through thehalf circle of the great circle that leads it toward corruption-that's thepresent phase-and at a given moment, when one reaches the limit ofchis movement, the god takes back the helm, makes the world turn in theopposite direction, and the direction of time produces a rejuvenation(rajruniunnmt]. Why must there be two circles? There isn't circular movement onlywithin each of the circles. The rwo circles belong to another circle, sincethe world periodically and una:asingly passes from the Zeus phase to theCronus phase and from the latter phase to the former one, from move-ment as we sec it today to the movement we would sec in reverse fashionand that would be the true movement. That, too, is a circle: the rwo sub-circles make up a great circle. "Why, then, are these two circles necessary?Because the world couldn't be either eternally the same-in that case, itwould be perfcct--or move eternally in the same way, because chat, too,would again be a world of perfection (269d-c). Therefore, there has to bea reversal of movement, the world moving in the other direction. I shall come back the next time to some of the myth's more specific as-pect~. I shall end today with a few thoughts about the why of chis digres-sion, what it's doing in the Statrsman. For, the justification given in thedialogue (in 275b--c) doesn't hold up. The jwrification is chat, when thereis a shepherd (pdm-] and a flock, there's a difference in nature between theshepherd and the animals he tends and pastures; therefore, the true shep-herd could only be a divine shepherd. But that could have been said with-out introducing rhc myth; it could have been said that this definitiondidn't hold up, and one could then have gone on to another definition ofthe statesman. Now, th:u's not what's done, and one instead enters intothe myth :ind the development of this myth. Why! I would like to maintain chat chis 6rst definition of the statesman asshepherd is in fact proposed by Plato only in order to be able to tell thestory of the reign of Cronus. It isn't the myth that is introduced in orderto refine the first definition; it's the first definition that is introduced inorder chat Plato might be able to bring up the myth, in order that theremight be something onto which to hang the myth. And why docs he want to bring up the myth? Well, because he wants!Oi On Plato's Statesman

to destroy fifth-century thought, destroy Democrirw's anthropogony,

which he cakes over from Democritus, for the passage from the MikrosDialtosmos preserved by Tzcrzcs shows a much more elaborate descriptionthan the one Plato-is summing up here of an initial state of nature and ofprogress coward a better self-organization. The idea must have been trulydominant among the freethinkers [esprits fortJJ of the fifth century, suchas Thucydides (who was not a philosopher but most certainly a greatmind), who fastened onto it. There is, then, among the thinkers of the fifth century, an ide.i. of theself-constitution of humankind, 7 For Plato, the point is to destroy thisidea. Indeed, in the anthropogony he gives, as if in passing, in the myth,human beings would be destroyed-and here, he's going back to the oldmythology-without the intervention of Prometheus, Hephaestus, andAthena (the gods who give the arts). On the ocher hand, he drops the partof the divine donations that had been there in the tale of Protagoras, 8 un-doubtedly a parable in which Plato is talking about Protagoras himself.There, Zew gave the political arc to human beings, sharing it out amongthem all. The political art is here a translation of democracy, pla~d in themouth of Protagoras, and it's no doubt a historically accurate translation,as it corresponds so well co the imaginary of Greek democracy. So, hedrops it; the gods are the ones who make it possible for humans co sur-vive, and these men have fabricated everything they have fabricated-cities, and so on-not in a cycle of the history of Ule world chat is the cy-cle of progress or in a cycle where processes unfold in the right direction[dans k bon uns]; they do so, rather, during a phase of the history of theworld that runs backward [4 l'mwn] (which, obviowly, co our corrupteyes, seems to be unfolding the right way round (4 lt'ndroit]}. Ultimately, then, there is in chis a way of appropriating the amhro-pogony of the fifth century by demolishing irs political and philosophi-cal meaning, by demolishing it as a kind of anthropogony chat was be-ginning ro stammer our the idea of humanity's self-creation, so as cointroduce the idea that what is there during chis period of corruption thatmakes it possible for us to survive is not a human creation but a divinedonation. Anyway, all chat appertains to a series of cycles that go on re-peating themselves and from which we shall never exit-so long, nodoubt, as we live this earthly existence. For, there always is in Plato chereservation about the immorcalicy of the soul and of another life. So, char', the point [finalitl] of the myth of Cronw, to which I shallreturn nexr rime.Seminar of March 26, 1986

We're cominuing with rhc Statemuzn.

If we're lingering so long over this dialogue, it's bee.awe it's a transitionalmoment bet'N"een the period when Plato was speaking on the basis of thepossession of a philosophical theory, of an epistimi, that is to lead to thedaboration of a model, of a city plan, char has co be far removed from re-ality in order to be good, and the final period of his philosophy-towhich the Statesman fully belong,-a period that could be called the pe-riod of the mixed, where, co put it brutally, the irreducibility of coral be-ing to the Idea of being crops up more and more. Total being is not onlyeidos; it's a composition of hu/i and eidos, of matter and form, as Aristotlesaid more clearly lacer on. But rhcrc Aristode was only bringing out theconsequences of rhis fourth manner, of this fourth period, of Plato's labor. And this recognition of the mixed, both as a kind of category and as acentral problem of his philosophy, as an obstacle that sets his philosophyto work and against which his philosophy is deployed, is bound to find aprolongation in the political domain. Prolongation is, moreover, a badterm, as it does not cake adequate account of the central interest Plato hasfor the political. le is therefore within this context chat the StateJman is situated. Andthis is also what allows one to understand its extremely strange structure:

A. Two definitions and a half, none of which is truly held until the end: -the statesman as pastor; -the statesman as weaver. 8. Three digressions: -the first one about the myth of the age of Cronw; IOI104 On Plrto's Statesman

-the second one about the forms of regimes and their evaluation; -a third one, of central importance, which contains the idea char science alone ddincs the political man or the royal man. C. And then the eight incidental points.

Let's leave aside the incidental poims, which arc frequent in Plato, as inAristotle, moreover, neither of whom arc the kind of authors who writedissertations. They write as they think, as their thought comes. Of course,they shape their thought [/a mtttml tn .formt], but if some considerationseems worth the effort to them, they aren't going to eliminate it under thepretext that it's outside the main ropic. And this is stated explicitly, in theStattsman, by the Stranger from EJca to Young Socrates: You'll mature weU, you'll age well, if you continue co have the a[[icude of not worrying whether one speaks with liulc discourse or much discourse, but measure the length of discourses and cheir appropriate or inappro- priate character according to che content, according ro che ching itself, and the rest doesn't interest us. fcf. 161e and 286e--287a}

The rest, he might have said, is good for literature, not for thought, norfor philosophy. But the digressions themselves pose a real problem. And in my opin-ion, the dialogue is written for them. It is, in a way, the dialogue that is it-self a digression for the three digressions. And it's the two definitions ofthe statesman that arc a pretext for the digressions. And above all for thetwo principal ones: the myth of Cronus and the central thesis that sciencealone defines the statesman. I'd now like not to resume but to complete the rcmuks already madeconcerning a few important points in this myth of Cronus.

V. The Three Digressions (Continued)

Fim Digmsion: Th, Myth ofth, R,ign o/Cron,u (Continud)

And I remind you, first of all, about the following very important ele-ment, which for the moment we can't do much about: Plato's will to an-chor his talc in a popular tradition by weaving together-a term from theSt11usman, and, as a matter of fact, from the second definition-three el-emcnrs of this tradition: Sm1inar ofMarch 26, 1986 ms

I. the recollection that there once were men who rose up from the eanh: 2. the nostalgia for a golden age, for happy times, for paradise onearth: the reign of Cronus (a nearly universal elcmcnc of folklore); J. the rather strange idea that there arc moments when the movementsof the heavens and of all canhly phenomena-the overall direction ofphenomena-arc reversed. In the Greek popular cradirion, this idea isconnected with Zeus's wrath at Thycsrcs for having committed a secondtransgression, which caused Zeus in his anger to reverse a.II the move-ments of the heavens.

We must stop here and rcAcct upon what chis can mean, first in Plato'stext and then in itself-a second consideration char is as important as thefirst one. You recall how things happen. When a world-course reaches its end, atchat moment there is a ltata.rtrophi, a brutal transition, a reversal, a turn-about at the same time as an upheaval. Another world-course then be-gins. One of these world-courses is dominated by Cronus; this is thecourse in which the god attends to the world. During the other course,char of Zeus, the world is abandoned to itself, and humanity is then sup-posed to make do [u dibrouilkr] alone, to struggle against wild beasts aswell as to see to its own physical subsistence and internal organization. But what, if we reAect upon it, docs this reversal mean? Of course, inspeaking in a loose way it could be said that there is a reversal of time. Butno sooner is this expression uttered than it fails us [now trahit), for thereis no reversal of time, and it can be asked whether the expression rroenalof time itself has any meaning. On the basis of and apropos of this Pla-tonic text, here we are as if smack dab in the middle of the AtlanticOcean, with no life preserver, no mast, and no islets covered with vegeta-tion. Without anything. W'hac does reversal ofthe course oftime mean? Isit conceivable, and what arc the aporias to which it leads us? What Plato is talking about in chis talc, and what all the time stimu-lates the idea of a reversal of the direction of time, is not che reversal ofche course of time-he's careful not to claim that. Ir's the reversal ofmovements, of the direction of different movements. To show this, let'stake two examples from Plato: the heavenly sphere and the generation ofindividuals.

1. The heavenly sphere. Instead of turning in the usual direction-for

On Pl:::toI Stacesman

us, from east to west-it turns in the contrary direction. This is a reversalof the direction of its movements. But after all, it could be said that chisdirection of rotation -is entirely conventional. There is no intrinsic privi-lege in the Earth's direction of rotation, we would say today after Coper-nicus. The Earth could rum in the other direction, in which case, ofcourse, che sun would rise above the sixteenth arrondissement in Parisand set over the rwelfch. The same goes for left and right. It is obviousthat spacial orientations are entirely conventional. But how do we maketemporal before/ after orientations? We always make them on the basis ofspacial bearings: the hands of our watches rum and a direction of the pathfollowed is defined on the basis of spatial bearings. 2. The generation of individuals. In this other example Plato provides,convencionalicy no longer operates. Under the reign of Cronus, mencame out, sprouted from the earth as old people and then grew younger [rajeuniJiaient] until the moment when, having become small childrenand then babies, they disappeared. Once again, one cannot help but ad-mire, at first, the might of the creative imagination as well as the logicalelaboration that accompanies it. If one leaves aside the talcs of traditionalmythology, chis myth of Cronus in the Statesman is the first entechnoswork of science fiction, science fiction written artfully-and not a meretranscription of some popular folklore-within universal literature. Therereally is science fiction in mythology, in the Vedas, but, as artificial writ-ing, Plato's tale is the first in the history of literature. 1

We therefore have these men who are born old and die as newborns.Oldborns, it would have to be said. And here, we can no longer speakabout a conventionality of rhe path of time. Of course, a sophist, push-ing an empty logic to the extreme, could maintain that after all someoneold or young, well, chat's conventional. But what's conventional is cheterm. At lease at the outset, because once it exists, ic commands a wholeseries of links and associations. One cannot change old into young wich-ouc modifying a huge quamity of terms in language. Ac the outset, lee ussay, logically, they are convencional. Bue the state of being old or youngrefers w back co a real description. And chis real description seems to wco be tied t~ a genuine before/ after chat cannot be reversed arbiuarily. Iam claboranng at length on what can pass for truisms, trivialities. But onemusr be careful precisely because these qucscions are always there, both inphilosophy and in basic physics: ls there really time? And what is the di- SrmiMr ofMarrh 26, 1986 107

reccion of time? What determines the direction of time? Is it purdy con-

ventional, like drawing axes on a blackboard? The o can be placed here,or there, and the same theorems, the same equations, can still be written;all one need do is invert the signs correctly. What does this before/ after, which we can get a fed for from this ex-ample-a capital one, actually-of the youth/ old age reversal, refer us to?h refers us to the fact that we cannot, despite all physics and all philoso-phies, prevent ourselves from chinking chat for us the direction of time re-sults from a son of intrinsi, inccrlocking [enckn&'hmzent] of events, someon the basis of the others. Things seem to us to unfold in the usual way,just as we stroke a cat in the way its fur lies. And if you stroke it in theother direction [a l'envers], your hand feds it and the cat reaccs. There'ssomething like an interlocking, sequencing [constcution], of events that to w seems obvious, necessary. Think of a banery of pots and pans rhat re-quire the smallest one to be placed in a larger one, and so on, in order tostack them up. We have here, then, something like a perception of a con-sccucion borne intrinsically by the things themselves, like an internal en-gendering of successions. And that's what we arc used to thinking of as rime. And what the Platonic talc of the myth of Cronw reveals to us betweenthe lines is anything but platitudes and trivialities. For, it involves one ofthe great unresolved problems of philosophy and of basic physics. Whenyou remain at the level of great traditional physics-that is, rational me-chanics, including its most accomplished form, relativity-the directionof time is, within the framework of these theories, entirely conventional.The classical example from mechanics, billiard balls hitting one ocher, iseloquent: assume they don't fall into a pocket-for, there arc indeed heresome things chat are irreversible-and film the process. What you sec inthe film (1) conforms entirely to the laws of rational mechanics and (2.)won't surprise you at all. Apart, char is, from the problem of the initialimpact [choc]. A5 for the rest, nothing about the sequence [dt'roulrmmt]will surprise you in the least. Now, cake a film of Charlie Chaplin. It shows you sequencings of ac-tions chat occur in life, chat is co say, irreversible occurrences. Look at thefilm in reverse: Charlie then climbs back up the staircase backwards andat top speed. And you laugh bccawc you have the immediate feeling thatchat's impossible, chat here there's a reversal of che direction of processeschat isn't possible. Why? Afr.er all, Charlie climhing back up a staircase in108 On 1 ·'4,oj- Statesman

reverse, his back facing the top of the stairs, is only a billiard ball whosedirection has been invencd. And if a ball can go from right to le&, it canjust as well go frorri left to right. Herc we're right in the middle of thegreat problem of the existence of irreversible processes, which is at rhcbean of thermodynamics and of philosophicaJ refleaion. Ir's just like thatmuch ralked-abour story about rhe egg: even if mechanically there's noabsurdity, if you break an egg, it won't put itself back together again onits own as an unbroken egg. 2 Here, there's something that mark.s irre-versibility. And rhc attempt to show why there is irreversibility is alwayspresent, is always open, and is always unreliable. The only thing physicistscould say about it is that the reversal of the direction of events is ex-tremely improbable. I'm not going to linger over this becawc this isn't what we arc dis-cussing for the moment. But I'm going to make one remark, anyway,which is implied in the text. The Stausman-which, with the Tim,uu.s, isthe first text in which the question of time is broached in the history ofphilosophy-refers to the following question: Can one or can one notconceive of a rime char is separate from any content? Clearly, if we can doso, the conventionality of the direction of time appears to be infinitelymore plausible, if not even ccnain. If, on the other hand, we cannot con-ceive of a time separate from all contcnc-as I, along with Aristotle, be-lieve to be the case-if we can think, if we can live a time only at the sametime as we think and we live the production of an intrinsic internal con-secution of cvencs, that is to say, the production of ~ems or of facts,some of them starting from (apo) the others, then, at that moment, thedirection in which events unfold also gives a direction to time. And thetemporal before/ after is not simply arbitrary. And that would indttd benecessary to give fuH value to the Statesman and the myth of Cronus quamyth. That is to say, in order to underscore the fact that we are talkingabout something that is impossible and nor just unusual, something thattruly challenges the constiruencs of being, rhe constituents of the uni-verse, namely, the internal solidarity of the unfolding [diroulnnmt) ofrime with the unfurling [dip/oiement) of being. For, that's what it's about.And it's this idea of an internal solidarity between the unfolding of timeand the deployment of being-which, for me, is the central idea in thisdomain-that is dismissed and condemned in a radical fashion in themodern age by the Kantian position, by the idea that subjectivity pro-duces, creates, a pure form of intuition that is time and that, as such, hasa meaning independent of every event that unfolds therein. Smiinar ofMarch 26, 1986 109

So much for what is embryonically in the myth of the Statesman and is

so pregnant. So much, too, for what, over historical time, over the timeof thought, was later on more or less devdopcd, more or less explicau:d,extracted from this text. But there are still sevcraJ points about which akw words mwr be said. And first of all, as to what Plato is developing in 271c, we may ask thefollowing: Whac was going on during those good rimes, during the timeof Cronw, when therefore it was the god himself who was directing thecourse of things? In relation co our present-day view, everything was go-ing in reverse: people were born old and died as babies. But here we comeacross again what Plato said over and over, fifty rimes in his dialogues,about the image of the world philosophy offers. Philosophy gives the trueworld; and chis true world is, for the common man, che world turned up-side down la' l'mvm]. In che true world, as philosophy unveils it, what re-ally matters is nonexistent for the common man; and whac is fundamen-tal for the common man is entirely unimportant. What is truth isappearance, and what is appearance is truth. And here Plato is celling usthis in another form: In the time of Cronus-which is the true time,since there the world was truly being directed by the god--cverychingwas, from our present-day vi~, going in reverse [a l'mvers]. A second point, found in 272.c. One can make the following diagram:

rest of existence

baby rt~ ~ -JI death

{ myth of Cronw immortality of the soul, reincarnation

For us, chis cannot change; it's time as such. And when Plato turns thecontents upside down, old age equals birth and infancy equals death.Here, too, there arc these two paths: men come out of the earth old, chenbecome babies again. It isn't roo clear what's happening, bur it must beassumed-since, for Plato, souls arc immonal-chat a life continues onceche child is dead, that his soul spends the time chat is necessary "behind"so as to re.a.pp~ by being born in an elderly person.110 On Plato! Statesman

So, is the true world the world of Cronus? No, we don't live in a non-true world; we live in the 'o/orld's bad period, the rime of Zeus, when theworld is abandoned to itself. But why does one pass from one world tothe other? And here, Plato's response is a return to an cssentiaJly Greekway of chinking. le is co be understood chat things turn round and roundand round, like the way the hands on a watch or on a clock turn around,and that at the end of n turns, some sort of period reaches its end; start-ing at that point, another period, a second cosmic cycle, begins, which,at che end of n turns ... and so on. And change occurs (272d) E1tEt6flyClp 1tClvtcov to\Ytrov xpOv~ EtEAE<.t>&ri Kai. µEtal}o)..Tl\' i&t yi:yveo8m,"when the time assigned to all these things was accomplished, when thechange had to occur,,, when the whole terrestrial race had been used up. But by whom was this time assigned? It's Cronw who's directing things here and who has assistant managers, shepherds who tend and pasture thedifferent categories of beings, including human beings. Well, who then assigns to Cronw the end of his reign? I remind you here of the kinship, if nor the etymological truth, of Cronus / chronor. chronos is time itself. There is therefore a supertime thatsays to time: Your time's up [ton tnnps est passl]. There's a higher author- ity that says to Cronus: Now it's over; it's time to pass [i/ fout parser] to the other cycle. And chis instance of authority is in no way a personal one. It's the things themselves, it's the necessity of the things themselves, it's an ananlt( that is superior to every personal instance of authority and to every deity. And in rhis way Plato remains profoundly Greek. This conception is deeply anchored in Greek history and the Greek imaginary; it is present throughout mythology. There is an iron ananlt(, an absolutely insur- mountable nec.essiry that no god can set aside or go beyond. And this is apparent ar several occasions in Plaw. Ir's apparent in the Timaew, for ex-ample, when the demiurgc manufactures a world that, while as perfect as possible, isn't absolutely perfect. The same thing goes in the Statesman, in 273b: the world abandoned by Cronus organizes itself as well as possible,eis dunamin. Therefore, when the supreme deity withdraws, that deityleaves the world to its heimarmrn(, to its destiny, and to its sumphutosepithumia, to the desire that is proper to it. An astonishing phrase! Andthe world's own desire, the desire proper to the world, is what happensthen during this phase: the world and humanity try with great difficu1ryto get organized, but they don't succ~d in doing so. Little by linle, theyapproach catastrophe, and then it's the end of this series of cycles: the god Smiinar ofMar<h 26, 1p86 Ill

is obliged to take back the helm, resume his post as helmsman, and setthings right again [rrdresstr /es choses}. The sumphutos, co-native, desire ofdte world, chat which sprouts with it, is at once chis necessity, this at-tempt, chis need to get itself organiud and the impossibility of succeed-ing in doing so. For, what is most preponderant in this world, accordingto Plato, is the tendency coward corruption and destruction. If one wishesto be anachronistic, one can talk about the death instinct or, rather, astruggle between a tendency coward integration and a tendency cowarddisintegration. And as it's the second term that is the strongest, at the endof a series of cycles, the god has to incervcnc in order to pull the world outof it and in order to save the world. Bue what is this whole story if not one huge theodicy, a huge apologia for god! If th.ings arc so bad, it's not the god's fault. He made the best pos- sible world with the material he had at his disposal. And chis maucr con- demns the world co a creeping [gradw//r] corruption. Let's give thanks at least to the deity for, on the one hand, having done everything he could and for, on the ocher hand, his repeated interventions aimed at salvation (273b--d). For, left to itself, the world degenerates into a more and more confused organizational Stace, on account of the fact that it contains a corporeal clement, intrinsically tied to its antique nature, which makes it lose memory of the Form the demiurge had imposed upon ic. There is therefore a lithi, a forgetting, of the demiurgic Forms; and, in an excraord.inary phrase, it is said thac the world is increasingly dominated by its passion toward the old disorder, che disorder of former times: 6\.lVOO't£UEt tO tf\c; 1tal.a1~ Ovapµcxrtiac; 1ta8oc; (273c). Abandoned to it- self, in the repetition of ever more calamitous cycles, the world would end in ics own catastrophe without divine intervention. Herc we very much have, then, a theodicy. There is, at the moment when the god "cakes back the helm" {273ct,the folJowing incidental phrase that goes to justify his intervention: Theworld is in aporia, near ics ruination, and what muse be avoided is that itwould plunge, chat it would dissolve, into "the endless ocean of dissimi-larity" (eic; tOv nic; civoµou)TT1toc; ci1tE1pov Ovta 1tOvtov {273d)). Onecould easily write four volwncs about this single phrase! Dissimilarity, al-tericy. This "ocean of dissimilarity" is indeed apeiros, infinite, inter-minable, uncxperimentable, ultimardy unthinkable. Can one, in effect,imagine a ~roup or a set of things chac would all be perfectly dissimilar inall respects, each one in relation to all the others? Ir's unthinkable. To beis co be identical co itself first of all in rime; and to be is m participate inIll On Plato's Statesman

the universal. To be is to have of itself something dsc that resembles it-

self. And this can be taken from aH angles. It can be taken, for example,from the most concrete angle of humanity or of biology: one cannot be adog all alone; that is so hoc only because there must be dogs but also be-cause: there must be meat hopping about in the form of hare. But it canalso be taken-and this is capital-at che most philosophical level: theabsolutely heterogeneous is a limit for thought. The world of the time ofZeus becomes more and more disordered, therefore more and more het-erogeneous, therefore less and less thinkable; and it rhereby participatesless and less in being. By intervening, Cronus saves the re.i.l, effectively actual existence of theworld. He saves the universality of being, but he also saves the means forbeing able to tell heterogeneity. For, in order to be able to rcll hetero-geneity, a certain basis for heterogeneity is required. In order to be able totell the other, there has to be chc same. In order to be able to tell underwhat aspect alone the other is other-in order co cell, anyway, that it isother than chis-it is necessary that the b chat is other than the a, ic isnecessary that both of them, in a sense, from a certain point of view, beplaced on the same level. Otherwise, it isn't possible. The third point, 274b, relates to chis new anchropogony, to the way inwhich the first savages were able to exit &om chat state and to create litrleby little a civilized life. I am swnmarizing here what I expounded atlength che last time. It's char with regard to this myth of anthropogenesisor of anthropogony that we have here-we're talking here about the cir-cle of Zeus-what was said of the individual being can be said of all hu-manity. Its birch is noc childhood, but it is a primitive state; it marchesalong therein toward a sort of civilization. This idea of anthropogony andPlato's description of it are opposed to what was there as a background inthe Greek tradition-that is, actually, the idea of a golden age, which ishere the age of Cronus. The age of Cronw is the Greek name for rhegolden age, the paradisiacal time, Eden. That's the thread Plato picks up.But starting in the fifth century-and without even bothering to say: Allchat is jwc some old traditions, popular nonsense, myths-thinkers likeDemocritus, Procagoras, and Thucydides affirm chat there had to havebeen a primitive scare, a technically and civiliz.ationally less advanced scarethan what exists today. And those are explanations that flourished in chefifth century and chat also went hand in hand-this, I believe, is implic-irly certain for Democritus as well as for Thucydides-with an idea thatisn't formulated as such but that is very much an idea of the sclf-consci- Snninar ofMarch 26, 1986 IIJ

tution of humankind. This human species really did forge itself by thesheer hard work of its own hands. Democritus and Thucydides alsoplaced just as strong an emphasis on material inventions. From chis pointof view, they anticipated Marx, who after all didn't invent chat much: thewhole material process by which people exited from their savage state isunderscored by Democritus and in Thucydides' "archaeology." There istherefore chis idea, which W2S present in the fifth century and which wasspreading at the time, of a sclf-consricution of humankind~ven if itwasn't designated in those terms. Now, what docs Plato do with chis myth? For a start, he rakes back upthe idea of an anrhropogony and at the same time, firstly, he rakes awayfrom it the historical character it very dearly had in Democritus and es-pecially in Thucydides, plunging it into an indefinite number of succes-sive cycles. All that is but an eternal repetition, sometimes heading in onedirection, sometimes in the other. Secondly, the best that could bedone-and this we shall see in detail apropos of the central major digres-sion-is but a miserable approximation of what could happen in the timeof Cronus. But here we find again, in this deliberately ahistorical presen-ration, Plato's will-manifest in the Republic and, above all, in theLaws-ro stop history, to frecz.e it, to put an end to all this change goingon in the cities, this adoption of new forms. More specifically, while inthe laws and in the &public this tendency manifests itself as a will aboveall not to change the city's Constitution, or else ro do so in an entirely ex-ceptional way, here, in the Staurman, it's simply an acknowledgmentrather than a will: there is no longer even any point in putting a stop tohistory; in a sense, history has already stopped. And chis has been so forever, since history never unfolds except in two types of repecicion that areconstantly reproducing themselves, by turning either in one direction orin the other. There is no history; there are only erernal cycles that unfoldin this time about which Plaro himself says in the Timaeus that it hasbeen created by god at the end of his demiurgia of the world as movingimage of eterniry.' This time chat is only an image of eternity is thusbound to be circular, for the circle, the cycle, is the figure that best recallsidentity: it can cum upon itself without anything being changed. There is also, of course, the crudest sort of reintroduction of a com-pletely mythical heteronomy (274c-d). Here, Plato takes over the mytho-logical tradition to say that it wasn't men who invented tools, cities, walls,5hips, as the Democricean tradition taken up again by Thucydides hadtaught. No, for Plato, it's once again Prometheus-Hephaestus-Athena114 On PIPto's Statesman

who have given men the arts they needed in order to survive-at the mo-ment, moreover, when they were threatened with extinction because wildbeasts were much more powerful rhan them. Thus, what is destroyed here is chis lcind of recognition--embryoniccertainly, but rather assured in its inspiration-that arose during the fifthcentury, a recognition of a sort of self-constitution, of self-creation of hu-manity. Destroyed is this embryonic awareness chat began to appearthrough efforts to rcconscicuce the initial phase of the history of human-ity in the anthropogonics of Democritus, of Protagoras, in Thucydides'''archaeology" and also even, in a sense, in Pericles' Funeral Oration. Thisembryonic awareness is destroyed here by the reimroducrion of a cosmo-logical heceronomy; ir is destroyed, therefore, ar rhc mythicaJ, cosmolog-ical level of a cosmology rhat has no orhcr grounds rhan Plato's ownimaginary. And it is going to be destroyed as well, we shall now sec, in thefirst digression, that is co say, in the idea chat what men were able to in-vent in order to safeguard themselves within the circle ofZew was some-thing quite inferior and without comparison to the an of the genuine pastor of human flocks. A fi.nal remark on this myth before entering into the main digression.What appears to be the goal of the Stakmuzn? To introduce behind Plato's political thought, behind the magistrates of the Lllws, what could becalled straugic reserves at the level of philosophy, at the level of oncology,at the level of cosmology. Thus, Plato's argument, his discussion in theLAws, is designed to show that magistrates of one kind or another arcneeded; and in the RtpubUc, it's that it is the class of philosophers that di-rects things, chat governs. Each time, he tries to justify all this discur-sively. The myth of the Statesman heads in the same direction, but inter-venes at a much more profound level, precisely by rccouncing that in thetrue state of things, in the time of Cronus, humanity was led [dirigle] bydivine shepherds. And it is only as "second best," a second and less goodsolution, that during the time of Zeus men govern themselves. But now Icome co the second digression.

&cond Digression: The Form of&gimts

Plato takes over the distinction between the forms of regimes alreadyused by Herodotus, then Xenophon, and Plato himself in the &publicwhen, mixing considerations relating to political philosophy and consid- Sm,inar ofMarth 26, 1986 115

crations rdating to sociology and anthropology, he distinguished the dif-

ferent types of political regimes, which have moreover remained classicwithin political philosophy. This discussion is resumed several rimes inthe Staksman, hue what interests us above all is rhat, apropos of chis dis-tinction bccwecn chc types of regimes, there inccrvcncs rhc much calkcd-about digression concerning the law and the fact thac it's not the law burscience that ought to prevail in the city. h's the statesman who possessesthis science, and this science can never adequately be registered in or rep-resented by laws. This digression runs from 2.92.a until 3ooc. It begins by seccing down aninitial basis in 292.c, where the Stranger says: But is all this truly serious,crying to distinguish the conscirucions of cities starting from the fact thatit's a few who dominate, or many, or everyone [la totalitl]; rhar there'sfreedom or compulsion; that it's the rich or the poor? Since we haveposited chat statesmanship is a science, isn't it in relation to this sciencethat we ought to make our distinctions? One cannot do otherwise, YoungSocrates obviously answers. The question that is raised henceforth istherefore necessarily the following: In which of these Constitutions is thescience of the governance of men achieved ... the greatest it is possibleto acquire? the Stranger continues {292d}. I would remind you that chis reproduces, repeats here, the kind of pe-titio principii that was nonchalantly introduced at the beginning of thedialogue without one really being able to take notice of it at that point.This begging of th'-' question seems to go without saying, but it's as ques-tionable as can be: Statesmanship is a science, an epirtimi in the strongsense of the term. That was said at the beginning of the dialogue; onewent off upon that; no one contested it; a bunch of things have been said;one then comes back to the description of the different regimes; and theway ordinary people describe them is the way they are described here.There arc democracies; there are oligarchies; there are regimes where therich dominate and ochers where the poor are the strongest, and so on.And suddenly, the xmos, a serious man, says: But what are we saying now?Hadn't we said that it's science char determines statesmanship? And ifthat's crue, it's therefore on the basis of science chat the rest, including icsrelationship co science, is to be determined. You are indeed right, YoungSocrates, of course, responds: "We cannot not wish it" {ibid.}. And thenone embarks upon the third digression, the one concerning science. Butone docs so only in order to leave it almost immediately, as early as 292.e,ll6 On P/a;3$ St.ttesman

and on an ultraempirical, entirely contingent, material remark, one that is

of quite another nature than the a priori considerarions chat preceded:"Well," asks the Stranger, "do we believe that, in a city, the crowd is ca-pable of acquiring this political science?" Attention must be draw~ here to Plato's extraordinary rhcroric-hisdishonesty? Considerations like "statesmanship is a science," which ap-pear to be logical, philosophical, a priori, go by jwt like that. It is, how-ever, an idea chat is situated at first sight at a very lofty level, one thatseems deep--which, indeed, it is-and chat raises an immense number ofproblems, even if it is false or questionable. Politics [La politique] apper-tains to the domain of making/ doing {faire]; making/ doing is a con-scious activity. Is there a notion of"making/doing well'' or of"making/doing badly"? Of course there is. If there's a conscious side to making/ do-ing, making/ doing well can only be tied to this consciow side. Therefore,the more one is conscious, the better one docs. A limit is reached: Docsabsolute knowledge guarantee correct making/ doing? Maybe. But here,how docs one get to the affirmation that it's ~pistimi alone that can yieldgood statesmanship [La bonn~ politique]? And to the affirmation that it'sepistimi alone that even defines the Idea of statesmanship? For, there is al-ways also the tendency in Plato to slide from the norm to being: goodstatesmanship is statesmanship. Bad statesmanship isn't statesmanship.Likewise, bad philosophy isn't philosophy; it's sophistry. And bad states-manship is only a variety of sophistry, chat is to say, truficking in idols,image peddling. It would have to be asked, moreover, how far this kindof confusion can go: Is a bad horse no longer a horse? OK, but herePlato's position is clear at lea.st in the domain of the faculties. So, this blunt affirmation with which we arc being bombarded, thatstatesmanship is a science, is rhetorical. But also rhetorical is the way inwhich it is interrupted, so that the Stranger can offer the following con-sideration, which is of quite another nature, a perfectly empirical and ma-terial one:

-On this score, is che crowd capable of acquiring this political science? -How would that be possible~ -But in a cicy of a thousand citizens, might a hundred or even fifty po~css chis science? !ibid.I

Herc, Young Socrates steps in and uners many more than jwc the five orsix words of agreement he wually utters: Smiin,zr ofMar,h 26, 1986 117

By this count, stacc:smanship would be the easiest of aU the arts. Out of a

thousand citiz..cns, it would already be quite difficult to find 6fty or a hundred who knew how to play checkers well. So, for chis an chac is the: most difficult of all, if there were: one citizen who possessed it, rhac would alrQdy be mir2culous! tibid.!

Under these conditions, the Stranger continues, it falls to chis rare citizen,should he truly possess the political science, to exercise the orthi archi, rheright command (293a}. And here Plaw, in a rhetorically quite beautifulyet perfectly atrocious declamation, draws out the consequences fromwhat has ju.st been said and jusri6cs the absoluteness of power: "Of theseindividuals, it musr be said thac-whecher they govern with or withoutthe willingness of the ocher citizens, according to grammata or withoutgrammata, whether they may be rich or whether they may be poor-it isthey who are the true sovereigns" {ibid.}. Their authority conforms to anarc. And the Stranger forces his advantage by resorting at chis point co a perfectly sophistical comparison with the doctor. This maneuver only re- inforces che resolutely rhetorical look of the entire argument. For, Plato's rhetorical panoply is now complete; and while he knows how to use the presentation of the plausible as proof of the true, he just as well plays upon a diversionary strategy. And it's elementary: shift the listener's focusof imerest and you've practically won. Try hard to prove something witharguments, figures, and so on. All your adversary then has to do is cry,"And what about Nicaragua? What about Poland? What about national-izations?" to gee the crowd to start roaring. So, the comparison-diversion is rather obvious, since it was introducedby a "besides": "Besides, if we had a doctor, would we say that he is less adoctor because he is rich or poor? Would we say that he is more or less adoctor because he acts according to written rules or without writtenrules?" {cf. 293a-b}. 4 Would you say chat a doctor's orders [une ordon-nance mldicak] are false because the patient refuses to follow chem? Ob-viously not. This refers us back to the Gorgias, to the way in which Platosees the relationship between medical techn( and rhetoric. Gorgias cells uschat his brother is a doctor, that he knows the right formulas to heal peo-ple, but that he doesn't know how to convince, is incapable of persuadinghis patient to obey him. It's therefore the role of the rheror, of Gorgiastherefore, co persuade this patient. Here, in the Statesman, the true doc-tor, whether or not he knows how to persuade and whether or not the pa-n8 On Plati/s Stoacsman

ticnt is convinced, is right and reasonable [a raison) to purge us, to cue

into our Resh, to burn, to operate, so long as he acts according to theright discourse [It bon dUcours]. the orthos logos. The same thing goes for the statesman, therefore. This is said withoutbting said, and here is where all chc contraband is smuggled in. "Amongthe political regimes, the different poliuiai, the sole genuine and good po-liteia will be the one in which the governors authentically possess the justknowledge, arc epistimon~l, scientists in rhe political domain" (293c). Andthese governors will be right and reasonable, whether they act accordingto laws or against laws and whether they govern :subjects who agree ordon't agree to be governed, and governed thus. Plato knows how to take care of his business. He's struck a very richvein, and he's going to try to draw out the most a:trc:me consequences.And when he gets there, after a discourse of apparently rocal rigor andseveral expressions of approval from Young Socrates, the lan:cr balks onceagain: "All chat is quite beautiful, but there is one thing that bothers meabout what we've said; it's chat story about according to laws or againstlaws" {293e\. The Stranger then resumes speaking, and this will be his oc-casion to offer the critique of the law. Here one may think, rightly, ofNapoleon and Clawcwicz, of strategy-but transposed into the domainof discourse: when a victory is won, it mwc be exploited ro the hilt, ig-noring secondary objectives and driving home one's advantage. TheStranger continues, therefore, saying: Not only against rhe laws, butwhether he kills or banishes cirizcns, since he acts tp' agathoi, for the goodof the ciry; since he has knowledge, he knows therefore what is good forthe city. This is truly the legitimation of absolute power; it's the GeneralSecretary of the Communist Parry who knows what is good for the work-ing class. And the tiny precautions Plato takes arc rather amusing:[(007t£p civ, as long as, as far as; E1tlo-niµU Kai tci> 6u:aiq> 1tpocrxp<i>µevo1.a(!)~ovtE<; (293d-c), wing science and right co save the city while makingit, as bad as it was, betcer. So, under these conditions, we have here chetrue statesman, therefore the true poliuia. And all the others arc bastardimitations, bizarre, counterfeits, and so on and so forth. No limitation can be imposed upon this absolute power, which is jus-tified by political knowledge, other than the one limitation chat resultsfrom its very own knowledge. Or else, from the nature of things. Buthere, nothing is specified. So, what is this nature of things? Clearly, onecannot make people walk on cheir heads; but beyond that, there: isn'c any- Seminar ofMarch 26, 1986 119

thing else. Who could say to the royal man: "You're going beyond whatyou can do"? In the name of what science would this be said? With whatright? le is he who possesses knowledge. And then, in 193c, Young Socr:ucs speaks up at some length: "On allthe other points, Stranger, your language looks to me to be quite judi·cious (metriOt). But the part about the obligation to govern without laws,here's a thing that one feels coo uneasy to hear spoken." And in fact, for a Greek, chis is absolutely inconceivable. I remind youof the declamation, in Herodotus, of the Spartan who had deserted toXerxes and who arrived in Greece with the Persian king's great army.Xerxes is sure of his victory, if only because the Greeks have no sovereignto lead chem into battle. And Demaratus responds, "You're mistaken, 0King, because they have a sovereign whom they fear in6nitcly more thanyour Persians fear you.-And who is that? asks Xerxes.-Nomos!" jcf. Hd,. 7.104}. More chan a century later, Young Socrates reacts the same way: Thisstory that the statesman can govern without laws just won't do. And the Stranger says: You've done the right thing to raise this objection; I was ex- pecting it; I was going to ask you whether you accepted all the things I'vesaid or else whether, among the lot of them, there was some assertion that bothered you. And, "Our intention will now be to expound upon thequestion of the rectitude of a government without laws" {294,a}. And thenhe launches into his much talked-about declamation, which is both verybeautifuJ and very true. Making laws is a royal job. I remind you of thisenormow abuse of language Plato commits in the Statesman by con-stantly identifying the statesman with the royal man. This is a monstros-ity for Greece, ~en the Greece of the fourth century, because rhe king isthe Great King of the Persians; he's che Asiatic despot. No one was a kingany longer in char age, and even the Sicilian tyrants didn't dare get them-selves called thus. As for Sparta, che "kings" were not truly kings. And yetPlato goes straight at it: The statesman is the king! The Stranger says, "Since the art of the legislacor is a part of the royalart, that is to say of the political art, what I am saying is that the bestthing is, not that rhe laws be sovereign, but andra ton meta phroniuOJbmi/ilton--the royal man who acts with phroni1is" {ibid.). And phronbi.Jisn't at all prudence; it's the creative aspect of judgment. It is not only, asKant would say, the capacity to place the case under the rule or even to6nd the common rule through a variety of cases. Phronbis is 6nding, on On Plato! Statesman

the basis of a unique case, an original rule that applies to this case andperhaps ro other cases that are to come. The case that arises being unique,it can't be subsumed under a law that is already there. The statesman, thebasi/ikoJ, must govern. Why? Because the law won't do: -Never will the law be able, in embracing precisely the best and the most just for all, to order the most perfect, for the dissimilarities of both men and of acts, and the fact that almost no human thing is ever at rest don't permit one to state anything absolute that would be valid for all times and for all cases in any maner and in any science. Aren't we agrecmenr upon this? -Incontestably! -Now, we sec the law tends to do prccisdy chat (that is co say, to impose everywhere and throughout all circumstances the same rule], as a pre~ sumptuous, arrogant, and ignorant man (anthriJpon autluuii kai amAthi) who wouldn't permit anyone to do anything against his own orders, or even co pose questions to him, or even, if something new arose, ro do better outside the rules he has prescribed. {294b---c)

The arrogant, presumptuous, and ignorant man is the law. I said onceand for all, "Put on your raincoat!" "But the sun's out," comes the reply."I said what I said." The law has spoken once and for all, and it sticks towhat it has said; it accepts neither discussion nor objections. This passage, which condenses a whole series of other dl!VclopmentsPlato has offered on this same subject, in particular in the Gorgim--anda collection of them has already been made-is also at the start of whatAristotle later developed in the fifth book of the Nichomach~an EthicJ onthe concept of equity.~ And this idea is also at the heart, at the basis, of allHegel's criticisms of what he calls the "abstract universal." All theHegelian criticisms of Kant, on the one hand, and of the philosophy ofthe abstract universal in general, on the other, arc to be found therein.And all chat overlaps with a very deep-seated motif of Platonic philoso-phy, a motif that is, moreover, contradictory-here we arc, once more, incomplete turbulence. This motif is contradictory because, on the onehand, we have chis theme that appears here apropos of the law-chat thelaw is always repeating the same thing-and that can be taken up againunder a thousand and one different forms; the law has to at least be sup-plemented, completed with equity. And here this critique of chc law canbe given a socialist form: The law, for example, just as strictly forbids richpeople from sleeping under bridges as it docs poor people. Or the law SnniMr ofMarch 26, 1986 Ill

prohibits stealing. Yet remember Us Misirabl.tr. a man is dying of hunger;

he steals a loaf of b~d ... and reaps five years' hard labor. Bur this critique of the law as immutable, blind, and deaf intersectswith another theme very frequently found in Plato. lc's a theme chat en-tirely corresponds to what he thinks; it is, namely, his critique of the writ-ten in relation to living speech. In chis regard, the basic text is the Phaedru.s. The Seventh Letta, too,which, I believe, isn't genuine but whose philosophical passages werewritten by someone who knew his Plato business very well. So, the writ-ten freezes thought once and for all, whereas in living speech, in dialogue,when I speak I can collect myself, go back and correct an error. Once abook is writccn, it's a decree. Ir's there once and for all; it can't be modi-fied. In addition, the argument developed in the Phatdrus is perfectlyjust: to the Egyptian god Thoth, who, in order to a.id men in their ten-dency co forget, invented letters and gave them to men, the Egyptian sageresponds: "O so d~er Thoth, you thought that you had found a medi-cine for men's forgetting, and you have invented a poison for their mem-ory, because now they have letters, and they will be proud of chem insteadof being proud of their own recollecrion" {cf. Phaedrus 275a}. And this isentirely true: if ever you spend some time as an ouclaw, you'll be aston-ished by your ability to remember two hundred phone numbers byheart-whereas, in normal times, you'll keep looking ac your addressbook in order co find your girlfriend's or boyfriend's number. From rhemoment you know thar something is written down, you trust in it, andyou empty your memory. h's quite normal. and it's physiological. An-other example: in court, the more illiterate a witness, the more accuratelyhe can reconstitute what happened on August 4, 1985, between Albercvilleand Val-d'lsCrc, what color the car was, and so on. So we have this theme of chc critique of the written, of the critique ofthe law, of the critique of abstract and symbol-laden thought in contrastto living thought, which passes by way of speech-a theme Jacques Der-rida has drawn upon a great deal in Speech and Phenomma, 6 and that canbe connected in general with a whole way of viewing things that here an-ticipates some much later conceptions, chat almost anticipates Saine Au-gusrine, and that anticipates the whole Christian imaginary, as Plato docsalso on a bunch of other points: The truth is living subjectivity. What iscrue is this voice that vibrates, the labor of thought chat comes about, sdf-correccion, invention, this spark that passes between the look of one per- On Plati-l Statesman

son and another when they discuss something, and so on. The rest, thingswritten down on paper, written traces, arc sorts of dead residues life ha.sleft behind it once it has passed by. I wa.s thinking, I was truly in the truthof thought, which is a subjective activity, which is the dialogue of the souJwith itself-as Plato says ~pon several occasions--and then I jotted downa few aspects of this now dead thought, of this dialogue of the soul withitself, on paper, on marble, on papyrus, on parchment. That's not the:truth. You see that around this theme: there is a whole philosophical inspira-tion that continues to nourish even Kierkegaard on the truth of subjec-tivity as source, in contrast to every work [ll'uvre) of subjectivity and, inparticular, in relation to the written, bur not only that. For, this critiqueof the work as opposed to subjectivity is also, with the huge anachronism that this implies, a critique of the alienation included in all objectivation:The creator who produces a work alienates to it a bit of his own being,loses in it some of his substance, more than what he gains therein in theway of immortality. And this is so not only becawe I lose (jt pt-rth] mylife in becoming lost (n, miibimant] in my work, but also because work is less true than what I am in the facuJcics of my thought, of ing thinking activity-that idea is already there both in the p the Stattsman and in the Phudrus's critique of the written, and it is throughout Plato. And when I say that we are here again in a turbulent situation and in a very deep-seated contradiction, that's because for Plato himself this ideacontradicts the cornerstone of his philosophy, namely, that being iseidos-that being is Form, that genuine being is the Ideas. And the Ideasaren't subjects. Perhaps there is something impermissible about wantingat all costs to set these currents in Plato's thought face-to-face with eachother [en regard] and to make them "cohere": on the other hand, there'san attenuation of the antinomy in a sort of ultimate point where the two things converge, which would as a matter of fact be char much talked-about idea from the &pubUc chat is the agathon, che good-which is notan ousia, an essence, which is not an Idea, either, but which is beyond ou-sia or beyond the Idea and about which it could be said that it is thatwhich grants at once the essence and the knowabiliry of the Ideas; it's ameta-Idea or a metasubject in which the two combine. All that remains apurely enigmatic analysis; it yields nothing. lmmediatdy beneath that, wehave a split expressed in the following face, thac, on the one hand, every Smiinar ofMarch 26. 1986 123

subject [tout .rujt't]~vcn the highest, like the demiurge of the Timarus--is impotent in relation co the materiality of the given, but that, on theother hand, it is itsdf subjected [soumir] to the rules co which che ridi, chcIdeas, the Forms give shape [formmt]. Therefore, genuine being is as fol-lows: it's what is always identical co itself; it's the Form. And there's theother aspect-at least when it comes co chc human domain, and it is per-haps here too that the ancinomies arc attenuated a hie-where Plato isconstantly affirming that the truth is on chc side of the living and speak-ing subject a.nd not on the side of what the subject has produced. Thetruth is in discourse and not in the written; the truth is in the knowledgeand the will [It 111voir a It vouloir] of the royal man and not in the laws.Why, chen, is it necessary, for wam of the royal man, to support somelaws? We'll see next time. From this standpoint, we see once again how right Alfred NorthWhitehead wa.s when he said that the whole of Western philosophy canbe understood a.s a series of marginal annotations drawn from Plato'stext. 7 It's true that I, Ca.storiadis, wouldn't be capable of drawing thesecondusions from Plato if others hadn't done so before me-and drawnthem in their own follies, drawn chem in certain directions. And like Placo himself in going co the utmost consequences of this thing or ofsome other thing, the face remains chat ic's nonetheless there that thiswhole movement finds its point of departure, an infinity of germs thatwere able ro develop in such fashion.

Your question is quite dear, but you are repeating what I said when Iwa.s talking about "moments of rurbulence." There are two things inPlaco, and I don't see how one can decide between them. Plato says ofevery law that it isn't false but inadequate, improper with regard to whatis at issue, chat is to say, che issue of regulating human life. We shall seethe absurdities chat lead to his critique of the law. What's at issue in chiswhole story? Obviously, it's me who's talking here. It's that Plato doesn'tsec the problem of the institution-and neither docs Derrida, indeed, inSpeech and Phmomma. He doesn't ~cc the relation_ship ~f the ~la~ ~e-tween subjectivity and its works. This person who 1s talking, chis l1vmgvoice, this animated thought is really possible only because there arc On Pl'1ro's Statesman

works, that is to s;1.y, because there arc institutions. These institutions arcthe product of instituting activities. h's true that there's an alienation chatis there all chc time in history, that involves getting lost outside [dtvant]one's works-and {chat alienation is thcrct not for chc personal subjectalone but for humanity in its entirety. That is to say, alienating oneself toone's institutions. Forgetting that one is instituting, and for very pro-found reasons. lc's very troubling, moreover. More generally, we can say that what Plato doesn't sec, any more thanDerrida docs in his critique of phonocemrism, is the relationship betweenchc living subject or the collectivity of living subjects or instituting soci-ety, on the one hand, and the work or the institution on the ocher.Seminar of April 23, 1986

Recall the strange structure of the Statesman-so strange that without

really pwhing things, as they say, we were able to distinguish three, or atleast two and a half, definitions of the statesman in the dialogue, of whichthe first two are manifest. Plato first offers a definition of che statesman asa pastor of Socks. He then abandons it on the basis of the argument-which is obvious, however, even before the outset-chat between a herds-man and the animals he tends and pastures, there is a difference: in n..ture,and chat the same thing cannot be said of the political man and the"flock" he looks after. This could be said at the very most of a god, whichleads to the first digression. Plato then offers a second definition. More exactly, he pulls out of hishat a paradigm, chat of weaving, and beseeches Young Socrates to examinerhis paradigm wich him on che off chance chat ic will shed light on whatthe statesman is. Off they go, then, inro the analysis of weaving, conclud-ing in the end chat the statesman is indeed a weaver. One would be led cobelieve, given the distinction of the different activities and of the differentarts chat make up (composentJ che city, that what the weaver weaves areprecisely the weft and the warp threads of society. Now, in face, there'snothing of the sort, because here, at the very moment when one thoughtthat one's troubles were over, it is discovered that what matters is not chedistinction between the city's different occupations but that between thesoul's different faculties. These faculties of the soul are, moreover, ex-pressed anthropologically and sociopsychologically, if ic can be put in thatway, and are presenred co us as being by narure in opposition to one an-other: extreme courage/ extreme prudence, for example. Therefore, the126 On PIAto': Statesman

scatcsman qua weaver has co weave together these different varieties of

vircues--or, ratht"r, of potentialities of virtues, these duruzmris of vinucs. It may be observed incidentally that the sole namplc that is chus com~posed in antithetical fashion by opposing potentialities is chat of bravery.This definition of the vice; and the virtues then draws to a conclusion,and it's left at chat. In the meantime, however, we're treated to at lusteight incidental points, including some very important ones concerningthe division into species and parts, chc imponancc of the viewpoint fromwhich a division is made, the theme of the paradigm and the elements,and, finally, relative measure and absolute measure. To what might all chis be compared? Perhaps co a theatrical play, to oneof chose tragedies where spoken parts and singing parts alternate. Or coan opera in which recitatives, arias, duets, ballets, and so on, succeed oneanother. So, there are the two and a half definitions, then the eight incidentalpoints and the three digressions, which I have distinguished arbitrarily,speaking of a digmsion when the argument is much longer and of an in-cidmtal point when it's relatively short in length, if not less important asa subject.

V. The Three Digressions (Continued)

The first digrmion is the one concerning the myth ofthe rrign o/Cronw (continued).

This is the only era during which one could have really talked about adivine pastor, the god of that era, a god in the form of Cronw, with theface of Cronus, who himself would then really have taken care of humanbeings, as well as of all the rest. He would have cared for, tended, and pas-tured everyone-all of creation, as is said today. Here, there's a differencein quality and nature chat would allow one to speak of the ruler[dirigeant], of the statesman, as a pastor of flocks. It's in this tale that the astounding idea of the r~ersal of time processescomes up: during the reign of Cronw, for no clear reason, the god acsome sec point abandons che world co its face. And then there's chat hugereversal of processes chat makes things go backward [A l'tnvt7J]; chey goin th(' direction that seems to u.s the right direction--children grow up,plants grow caller, the sun goes from east co wesc--bur that is the reverse Snnir,ar ofApril 23, 1986

{/'mllt'r.Jj of the true order of things. ThlS is a clear aUwion to the fact thatthe verities philosophy discovers arc:, from the point of view of commonsense, absolutely mad; it's the world turned upside down [k montk a l'en-vtn]. That's a theme that has been constant among the philosophers sinceHeraclitus at least, and one that Plato rakes up again here. Then, chcworld, being left to its fate, tries to get organized the bcS( it can, buteverything goes less and less well; things head toward corruption-un-doubtedly because, among ocher reasons, humans aren't capable of self-governing thcmsclvcs-unril the moment when, with total dissolutionthreatening the universe, the god cakes matters back in hand, steps up tothe helmsman's post again, and, with a 6rm hand, reverses the course ofthings ane¥1, actively looks afcer the governance of the universe, and secsit on the straight path (k droit chemin]. I said a few words lase time about the motivations that made Plato in-troduce this myth. My hypothesis is that it's not the myth chat is intro-duced in order to justify what is said in the dialogue bur rather the dia-logue that is introduced in order to jwtify the myth. We'll come back tothis point when we talk about the overall structure of the dialogue, at rhcend of our discussion.

The second thgnssion concerns the form ofregimes (continued).

This digression comes in rwo fragments: 291d-c, then at much greater

length from 3ood to 303b. A division of regimes is established there, andpolitical regimes, at least the least bad ones, arc evaluated. Herc again, theorganization of rhc text is neither square nor round, it isn't linear; buthere it's more understandable. First, historically speaking, the question ofa typology of political regimes wasn't highly worked out in Plato's time.The Greeks empirically contrasted royalty or monarchy with regimes theyin general called aristocratic-without further distinction-and withdemocracy. Moreover, for chem, monarchy remained a rccolleccion fromthe epic poems. And it existed for them essentially as the barbarians' formof governmcnr. It's rhe barbarians who had monarchies or other forms ofkingship. There were indeed kings ac Sparta, but that was quite anotherthing than real kings. Spartan kings had a few institutional powers andwere above all commanders-in-chief of the army-permanent, hereditarystratigoi in a way. I have already cold you char rhc first formal (m rtgk] division of128 Un Plstoi'Slattsman

regimes was made by Herodotus, around 44er-430 e.c.E., in the much

talked-about discussion between rhe three Persian satraps about the bestregime ro bestow on l'ersia after the assassination of the usurper Smerd.is.There, Otanes defends democracy against Megabyzus (partisan of oli-garchy) and Darius (partisan of monarchy), but with some very bizarrearguments. Then, there's the Aowering of Sophistry, rhcn Thucydides,and so on. A discussion about rhe different political regimes, about theirform, their classi6cation, was beginning to be sketched out, but the out-lines were still quite rough. Plato himself, in the Republic, had provided his own account of theform of regimes. He resumes that exposition here, bur from another an-gle. Recall what happens: at the outset, he begins by distinguishing,rather strangely, five regimes, so as co yield, at rhc end, seven. This was,indeed, what was to be expected after the distinctions he had made in thisdialogue. From his point of view, this is the right division [/.:r bonne divi-Jion], the correct typology. Why seven? Because there's one regime that isrhe only good one, the sole true one: it's the one in which a genuine po-litical man rules, governs. As will be seen at length and ad nau.seam, itdoesn't really matter whether he governs with or without laws, with gram-mata or without. He knows what is to be decided, he orders it, and it'sdone. That's the absolute-which, like ~cry absolute, is one. There aren'tseveraJ of chem. Next come the less good regimes, which are the conventionaJ regimes,those that had already been distinguished in Herodotus. But here it'sdone with a supplementary distinction. For, in the huge third digressionchar intervenes in 292a-3ooc, which could be entitled "Science Alone De-fines the Statesman," Plato has already established chac what's needed firstis the statesman's science, therefore a regime governed absolucc:ly by thestatesman or the royal man (this adjective royal being, moreover, a terribleabuse of language, very anti-Greek). Inasmuch as he has already estab-lished this, though at the same rime he has ascenained chat no suchregime ever exists in practice, he's driven to what he calls the "second nav-igation," the second best: in the absence of chis "royal" man, we can havewritten laws. But chis makeshift solution [pir-alkr], this lesser evil, is ac-cepted after a d,:va.scacing critique of the very idea of written laws, chis cri-tique-I draw your attention to chis point-being in the main entirelyjust. This marks Plato's genius. The use toward which he shifts chis idea isobviously another matter. Smiinar ofApril 23, 1986

If, therefore, we have, as a second solution-a "less bad" on,:-a

regime with laws, then we can resume the traditional cypology: one, sev-eral, all. But this is done with the criteria of according tQ laws or withoutlaws. And that yields:

• one governor, according to laws, is the true monarchy; without laws,

it's tyranny; • several governors, according to laws, is a well-regulated oligarchy;without laws, it's a tyrannical oligarchy; • the crowd governing with laws will be a (Olerablc democracy; with-out laws, it will be a deplorable democracy. (Herc Plato somewhat antic-ipates Tocqucvillc's idea of despotic democracy.) 1

Such, then, is the division with which Plato ends up. Later on, I'll cakeup a few more subtle poincs. Bue this second digression on the form ofregimes and their evaluation is interrupted by what is, with the myth ofCronus, the other major, central, and genuine point, the Statesman'sother large digression: Science, the sole definition of the statesman.

Third dig;rrssion: Scimu aWnt defines the statesman.

The way in which chis third digression unfolds-and chis third digres-sion is also, in a sense, like a third definition of the scacesman-c.an be re-consuucted in five stages:

1. In 292e, Plato lays down the basis for this discussion.

2. In 293, he then indicates this definition's absolute character. 3. In 2942-<, the lengthy developmem on the law and ics essencial de-ficiency follows. 4. In 294c-297d, the conclusion chat follows therefrom is drawn inwhat may be called the first navigation; there, Plato defines the absolutepower of the royal man. 5. In 297d-3ooc, there's the second navigation, which offers as lesserevil law-related power and no longer absolute power.

For the discussion chat follows, I would like to go very quickly backchrough the principal arricularions of chis passage, chis third digression. This is how it begins in 292: suddenly, after having discussed a bit whatwas said in the second digression on the forms of regimes, the Strangerfrom Elea colleccs himself, strikes his forehead, and says: But what haveljO On Platuj Statesman

,.., bc,n doing here? What had been said at the ou'5Ct has been forgotten:that the true polit~Ul, the true city, cannot be defined in terms of itswealth or povcrry, or according to the one or the several; rather, some-thing else defines it. And this other thing is the archi basiliki: royal, po-litical govcrnmcm. Let us observe once again, in passing, that rhc inter-changeability of the two terms, political and "'la/, persists throughout thetext. This ought to have been very striking at the rime. And ir remains sofor us today, moreover: the statesman cannot be called "royal.,. It's ametaphor still found in the expression "royal road,,. or when we speak ofa "royal flwh" in poker, but it isn't clear why politics would be the royalart. So, the Stranger pulls himself together and says: What defines the royalart, evidently, is epistimii and if we want to be consistent with what wehave said, chat's what must be set at the base. Young Socrates is, of course,in agreement, and the fundamental postulate of the dialogue and of allPlato's thinking as concerns the statesman follows immediately. TheStranger questions Young Socrates:

-Well, do you believe chat in a cicy die crowd would be capable of acquir- ing chis science? -How could one believe thac? -Would, in a cicy of a chousand men, a hundred be capable of arriving at possessing it in a su~cicnc fashion? (191e)

And Young Socrates responds that, if such were the case, politics wouldbe the easiest of all the sciences, since ..one wouldn't find such a propor-tion of champions among a thousand Greeks,. {ibid.) even in the game ofcheckers! Therefore, whether it is a matter of a government of several orof all, all thac really matters to w is that this government be straight andupright [droit], orthi, that is to say, according to science. And therefore it doesn't matter whether those who govern according toscience do so •with or against the will of their subjects, whether or notthey arc inspired by written laws, whether they arc rich or poor" {29µ},and so on. The formulations in Greek arc atrociow, but from the rhetor-ical, literary point of view, they arc splendid: tantt htlrontim tant'alrontOn-thcsc arc the son of rhymes rhat began to be inuoduced withGorgias-tantt lr11ta gr11mma1a tantt antu grammatOn, { . .. J unpl,,utountn ; p,,wmmoi; if they govern according to science, they arc goodgovernors. S,minar ofApril 23, 1986 IJI

Herc we muse admire Platonic sophistry and rhetoric, for it's rhetoric pure and simple. And it garners one's allegiance when one d()(sn't reflect too much. For, this rhetorical and sophistical side is covered over-in thecontext of the Platonic dialogues, and in parcicular in the Statt'.m1an--by the extraordinary audacity, by the radicaliry, of what is said. We're inGreece, in the country where the traitor king from Sparta responds toXerxes, in Herodotus, chat chc Greeks perhaps don't have chiefs in theway he, Xerxes, envisages chem, but char they have one whom they fear much more: nomos, the law! And here Plato has just said: No matterwhether the statesman governs with or without nomo1, with or withoutconsent, as long as he has epislimi . .. h's outrageous! Then, with the listener preny much dumbstruck, there follows thesophism with the doctor e:umple. For, the Stranger says, how do you be· have: with doctors? If they have medical knowledge [I.a scimct midicalt], whether they cur, prick, or burn, whether the patient protests or whether he is in agreement, whether they follow Hippocrates, a medical diction· ary, or prescribe from memory, whether they arc rich or poor, if they're doctors, they act according to medicine. And the patient obeys! We're in full tautology, A= A. He's a doctor if he's a doctor. And that's what we call medicine, says Plato. "Of course," answers Young Socrates. So, the same thing goes for cities, which will be able to be called corrrct only to the ex· tent chat they're ruled by archontaJ alithOs tpistimona.J {293c}. chiefs en·dowcd with a genuine science, true scientists. Bur not in the sense of the natural sciences; scientists, rather, of political affairs and, moreover, ineverything. And not only seeming to be scientists, ou doltountas monon{ibid.j. And it is of no importance whether the rulers are rich or poor, orwhether people want or not to be governed by them! "Certainly," Young Socrates again acquiesces. But here, he speaks a bitquickly, and he will later of his own accord retract the overall consent hegramed as early as 293e. Nevertheless, the Stranger, coasting on chis rhetorical groundswell chatinundates rhe listener, the reader, and garners their agreement (raison]and their allegiance, proceeds to exploit his advantage thoroughly. Hereagain, one must be Clausewia.ian: as soon as there's an opening, one mustsend in the maximum number of troops and crush all rcsistance. So, theroyal man can punish, kill, or banish people so long as it's to tidy up, topurify, to cleanse the city. He can send out colonies of cicizc:ns like swarmsof bees in order co reduce the size of the city; or conversely, he may:32 Un Plato': Statesman

"import people from abroad and create new citizens" (293d) becawc thecity has ro expand in size. Everywhere and always, so long as he aces whileusing science and right, ,he saves the city by improving it as much as pos-sible in comparison co its previously less good state. And such a city isthen what we shall call chc true city; and, by implication, these rulersalone arc those whom we shall call true staccsmcn. And the others won'tinterest us for the momcnc. Bue here Young Socrates pulls himself together and says: Everythingyou've said until now, Stranger, is excellent, save for one thing that seemsto me to be difficult to hear. To "swallow," we would say. And it's chat onemight govern even without laws. To which the Stranger responds: You'vegotten a bit ahead of me, because I was going to ask you precisely whetheryou really approved of all these reflections. And so let's now examine thefollowing question: Can there be a just government with or without laws?But in order to do that, continues the Stranger, one must first posit thatthe art of establishing laws is, in a certain fashion, a part of the royal art,tis basilikis esti tropon tina hi nomothetiki !cf. 2942). And the best thing isthat it is not the laws that govern but rather the royal man endowed withprudence, andra ton meta phroniseOs basililton (ibid.!. That seems to be aredundancy, because one really wonders what a royal man withoutphronisis would be; phronisis appears to be an absolutely key ingredient ofthe royal art. Let's leave that aside. But why must one prefer the royalman to a regime of laws? And here follows that passage that I told you issplendid and entirely true. I'll read you my translation:

Never will the law be able, in embracing exactly what is the bcsr and the mosr just for all, to order what is the most perfect, for the dissimilarities of both men and acts and the fact that almost no human thing is ever at rest don't permit one to state anything absolute going for all cases and for all times in any matter and for any science. [ ... ) Now, we sec that that's the very thing law wants to achieve, that is to say, to state absolutes valid for everyone and for all cases, like an arrog.mc and ignorant man who wouldn't permit anyone to do anything against his orders or to pose qucs~ tions to him, or even, if something new arose, to do better than what the law postulates outside its prescriptions. (29...,a-b)

You see that this passage is extremely strong and, at first glance, devoid ofrophistry. Quite simply, it is in a sense the opposition, stated for the firsttime in Plato with such force. between the abstract universal and rhc con· S<minar ofApril 23, 1986 133

congrucnr with, be lacking in distance in relation to what i~ concrete,what is real. And Plato uses this splendid metaphor, anthrOpon authadiltai amathi, an arrogant and ignorant man who, whatever is said, alwaysgives the same answer: "Don't do char." "But children arc dying!" "Butthe enemy is already in the town!" "But the house is on fire!" "No, no,"he repeats, "do this, not that." The law is like a broken record. Plato also offers another quire lovely formulation: Isn't it impossible forwhat is always simple and absolute to 6.nd itself in a right relationship [unbon rapport] to what is never simple or absolute? This is another formula~tion of the necessity of law. Why, then, is it necessary under these condi-tions to make laws, since law isn't the most correct thing one might con-ceive? "We have to find out the reason for chat" (294d). After variousexamples that don't interest us much here, the Stranger offers that ofgymnastics teachers: they cannot kptourgein, enter into "the minutiae ofindividual cases" {ibid.~. but rather give the general principles of training,write them down even, without going into derails. "They impose uponan entire group of pupils [sujets] the same exertions ... or all other exer-cises" (294(1~), without formulating individual instructions [prescrip-tions]. A principle of economy, therefore: envisaging the best rule for themajority of cases and the majority of subjects. The abstract universal aseconomy. This theme, which will loom large in the history of philosophyand in epistemology, is almost everywhere when we try to think ensidi-cally: one tries to arrive at fewer laws, to reduce theorems to a small num-ber of axioms, and so on. Therefore, a general rule is given to all those who are training in thegymnasiwn. And the same thing goes in relation to the law, he says. For,how could a royal man, a governor, rigorously prescribe for his subjectswhat is co be done, everywhere and always? He would have to spend histime seated by the bedside of each of them, parakathimmos {295al, andprescribe to chem what they are to do. For, that's how one is to under-stand what the royal man ought co do. And as remedy for this impossi-bility, one must lay down laws. One can already sec the many leaf-covered traps that have to beavoided in order for one to traverse this passage. There's the comparisonwith the gymnasium, of course, but above all the predefinition of theroyal man as he who has epistbni. From that point on, it doesn't work, be-cause this royal man would have to remain constantly at the bedside, or134 On Plato's Statesman

seated at che side, of each person. The Greek word paraltathimmos, how-ever, evokes the image of the patient [du ma'1u:k] lying on his bed. Thedoctor arrives, sits down by his side, takes his pulse, looks at his tongue,and so on. He is scared a-~ the side: there isn't any other clear usage of theterm paralcathbnmos. Bue what does this comparison mean if not thateach one of the human beings who make up the city is sick [malatU]!Who cold us he's sick? This just slips in among the text's implicit as-sumptions. And out comes the need for a doctor who would be seated athis bedside all the time. As one cannot have a doctor seated at one's bed-side all the time, out comes a medical prescription: four aspirins a day.That's it. It's the second best, the second navigation, ho deuteros plow. There then follows a working out of this comparison where Plato really"pushes" things, since he makes a long comparison co reinforce his ideathat the laws are uuly only a less bad (and never good) solution, yet alsoto say that, though only less bad, this is nonetheless a solution. Suppose adoctor or a gymnastia teacher has to go abroad. Fearing that what he hassaid to his patients or to his trainees [sujtb d'mtrainemmt] might be for-gotten, neglected, he writes to tell chem what they have rn do. There'snothing else he can do. Suppose again, says the Stranger, that things hadturned out against expectations and that the doctor comes home morequickly than he thought he would. He has left doctor's orders for sixmonths, but he comes home at the end of three months. He goes to sechis patient and says to him: Your situation has changed; yow treatmenthas to be changed. What would we think of the sick man who would say:Oh, no! Nothing doing! Since these "letters" have been written our J r sixmonths, I'm going to follow chem for six months. "That would be ab-solutely ridiculous," Young Socrates replies reassuringly {295e}. So, if thatis so, the same judgment must be made regarding the just and the unjust,the beautiful and the ugly, the good and the bad, once they arc defined,written down for human Rocks. Ifhe who has laid down these laws wantsto change them, he can legitimately impose new rules without botheringto convince the inhabitants of the city. And the same thing~ if, a cen-tury lacer, another great man, another baJililtos, similar to the first, ap-pears. And similar to him not according to appearances but de jure, byright. He will have the right and even the duty to prescribe other rules."Of course," Young Socrates confirms (296a}. And the Stranger again exploits his advantage. Under these conditions, Smiiruzr ofApril 23, r986 135

we have to refute what is commonly said among the Greeks, namely, that,if someone knows of better laws than those that exist, he has to try to per·suadc his city to adopt chem; hue ifhc doesn't succeed in doing so, he hasto abstain. This is truly quite lovely: Plato is consrandy repeating, but ina negative and as if mocking tone, what were the true principles of thedemocratic practice, which was commonly known [conscirncr communt']and went without saying. And indeed, Young Socrates is a bit surprised:Isn't what proplc say true then?

-Aren't they right?

-Pt'rhaps, says the Stranger. Bue if someone, in forcing another and doing without his consent, imposes upon him what is correct, what would you call chis violence? (296a-b)

For example, when a child is forced to do what he's supposed to do even

though he doesn't know chat he is supposed co do it. Or when a patient isobliged co follow a treatment, and so on. So Young Socrates is obliged toagree that char would be correct. Well, it's the same for statesmanship: itwould be completely ridiculous co complain about someone who vio-lently compels a cicy, despite what is written and in spire of the patria,that is to say, in spite of rhe traditions char come from the ancestors-I'llhave a word co say about the patria in a moment-if chis person who vi-olently compels ir docs so in order co oblige the citizens co do somethingelse chat is more just, better, more beautiful. And whether he is rich orpoor, whether or not he worries about being persuasive, wouldn't reallyhave any importance. The same thing for the captain of a ship. In chis passage, too, there is avery beautiful and arrociow phrase-atrocious? well, all this is very am-biguous, and I shall come back co the interpretation. What, as a goodsailor, docs the captain of a ship do? Let's dramatize things a bit: a ship inthe midst of a storm and subject to imbecilic regulations. He gives orderschat may end up contravening chose regulations, orders that, at any race,neither implement these regulations nor respect chem; and in doing so"he offers his art as law," tin technin nomon parechomenos j297aJ. This isa very bcauriful phrase that anticipates, in a sense-though all chis re-mains implicit and hasn't been explicated by anyone-Kant's third Cri-tiq~. For, what Kant says in the Critiqi« ofjudgment is precisely that, tintechnin nomon pa"chommos. That is to say, the work of genius furnishes n,-, Platu; Statesman

a law solely on the basis of its art, art here meaning the capacity to con-m:ct imagination and understanding. And it's already here. I remind you what Whitehead said about the whole of Western philos-ophy as commentary in the r;nargins of Plato's text. And not only com-mentary in the margins, because here, it's rather like Proust's rolls of pa-per: there's a phrase about a party chat might rake place at MadameVerdurin's at the end of the book; and as the galley proofs came back fromthe printer, it became volumes. And it's the same thing for philosophy:something is pulled out here and then it swells up like chat because thac'sthe potentiality of the text. So, it goes for the city the way it goes for the ship, says the Stranger.Here, moreover, mere reperirion fills in for che weakness of rhe argument:Never could the crowd participate in this science and therefore govern aship or a city meta nou (297a, 297b), with intelligence, mindfully. Andtherefore, chis city governed by a policicaJ man, a royal man, is the solejust city, the sole correct one, all the others being only mimimata (297c}.imitations. That's a big theme chat's always there in Plato, an ontological theme: The world is an imitation of the eternal living being; the othercities are imitations. If that's the way it is in the case of other cities, it follows therefrom that, since they don't have chis royal man, they are well advised to protect themselves wich written laws and not permit anyone co infringe upon those laws. Thar's a second-order way of doing well. Then follows a sort of digression within the digression, an incidental point within the digres- sion, which makes a kind of charge, clearly an ironic one, against dt noc- racy, and against the Athenian democracy in particular. But I said chat a commentary is in order about the notion of patria, about those laws of our fathers (sec Finley). 2 For, in the fourth centuryand already at the end of the fifth century, contrary to what one might have believed, the p11m·a at Athens was the democracy. It wasn't an ancien regime before the revolution; it wasn't something aristocratic predatingCleischenes or even Solon. When the dimos revolted against the oligarchic regime in 411 or, later on, against the Thirty Tyrants, it restored the pa- trios politeul, rhe regime of our fathers, that is to say, the democracy. OK.And when Plato attacks the idea that the regime of our fathers, qua regime of our fathers, is something untouchable, he's entirely right: it'snot because it's the regime of our fathers chat it's untouchable. Only, what Seminar ofApril 2J, 1986 1 37

he imcnds herr by "the regime of our fathers" is in fact the democracy.

Bur then at the same time it is clear how much Plato, aU the while beingauthoritarian, absolutist-the term totalitarian would be anachronisticand ridiculous in this concexr-is radical and is absolutely not conserva-tive. Not only because the patria is the democracy, but also becawe he ab-solutely does not want to restore the aristocratic regime at Athens. Anywell-bred, well-educated aristocrat of sound conscitucion belonging to theright club at Athens would have recoiled in horror at Plato's political pro-posals. Plato is a radical, and his project bears no relation to the "reac-tionary utopia" spoken ofby {the German sociologist Karl} Mannheim.He doesn't wam co restore past time, if only because he knows chat chispast time contained-and chis is very importam-che seeds of its owndestruction. And that's the lesson of the passage in the Rtpublfr thar givesthe succession of regimes {cf. books 8 and 9}. One stares with a regimechat is approximately good, but char regime becomes corrupt; one passeson to oligarchy, co democracy, then to tyranny, and the cycles repeatthemselves. Plato's effort-and in this he is simultaneously radical andsomething quite ocher than reactionary-is to 6nd and to 6x in place aregime chat will stop history, chat will stop the passage of time, that willstop a.s far as possible the self-corruption immanent in human regimes.That's the regime of the Republic; that's also the regime of the lawJ, witha few concessions co make it more Aexible, enabling it co survive better,to adapt itself without changing within the Aux of historical movement.

I return to the passage that begins in 298a, co this ironic charge lodgedagainst the Athenian democracy. It begins by a "Lee us suppose." Andhere che Stranger from Elea cakes up again his two images of the captainand the doctor. Let's suppose, therefore, that people a.,,semble and decideall together what is to be done both in navig:uion and in medicine, with-out necessarily paying greater attention to what is said by those amongche crowd who happen co be doctors or captains. A decision is made, avote is taken, and what has been voted is wriccen on steles. These arecalled ancestral customs; and it is required, under penalty of death per-haps, chat doctors or navigators henceforth conform to what the ekkliJia{assembly} has decided. Young Socrates is astounded: "You're really spout-ing absurdities" {298e). Bue rhe Stranger keeps at it: All that's still norh-,38 Q,i Plato's Statesman

ing, for a magistrate is going co be chosen each year by lot, and he is go-ing to oversee the execution of what has been decided in this way. YoungSocrates: "More and more absurd!" {ibid.}. But look what comes next,continues the Stranger: So when each magistrate has complcred his year in office, a tribunal of judges (diltmtai) drawn by loc, either from among the rich, or from a list drawn up in advance, or directly from among the whole people, mwc be empanelled to bring before them the outgoing heads in order for them ro render there their accounts; and who~er wishes co will accuse them of nor having, over the course of che year, governed che vessels according to che written lener or following che old customs of the ancestors. The same license will be given to those who heal che sick, and che same judges will assess che penalry to be inflicted on or the fine to be paid by those who arc convicted, ({298c-}299a)

An ironic Young Socrates says that one would truly have to be mad to ac-cept a magistrate's office under those conditions. And it goes on like thatfor almost three pages in the BudC edition: a long declamation(298a-3ooa) in which Placo grotesquely caricatures the Athenian democ-racy, comparing it to a regime chat decides in every panicular scientific-technical domain according co the procedures reserved for political de-bate. A5 if the Athenians had ever dreamed of deciding by majority voteabout how co make medical diagnoses, the "governance" ofboacs, the wayto conduct a battle, or the verticality of the columns of the Panhenon!They never made decisions like that. Phidias and lctinw builr theParthenon, and chat was that. le wasn't discwscd, and Plato knows chatvery well: this is the whole discussion from the ProutgoraJ. And it's the ar-gument made by Protagoras himself, the great Sophist, who distinguishesas a matter of fact between affairs of general interest and specific, techni-cal forms of knowledge, the ttchnai, foe which there is a particular com-petence. And if someone who knew nothing about it stepped up to thetribune and spoke in order co counsel the Athenians about the construc-tion of ships, they'd laugh him down in such a way that the guy wouldstop, because everyone knew that he wasn't a specialist. Whereas, if ashipbuilding engineer [ttchnicitn] were to step up co the tribune andspeak, he would be listened to respectfully. On the other hand, when it came to general political affairs, anyonecould talk and everyone would listen to him because there wasn't any par- Sm,inar ofApril 23, 1986 1 39

ticular, specific techni involved there. Protagoras says this in the mar-velous myth in which Zeus hands out techni politiki to everyone equally. 1And Plato, of course, knows all that. He knows at least that there's a prob-lem. And he has to know all the more that there's a problem bee.awe hiscritique of the law potentially bears upon this problem. That critique alsomeans that there is no universal knowledge; there is no discursive knowl-edge concerning human affairs. Bm then, what is chis epistimOn who al-ways knows what is to be done in each particular case, wharnrer the do-main in question might be? There's a problem. Anyway, here this problem is skated over; chis is, all at once, Plato's the-acricalicy, his rhetoric, and his sophistic. The problem isn't truly exam-ined. And the Athenian democracy is presenred co us a bit the way thelace {military aviation bwinessman and Gaullisc policicianl Marcel Das-sault would have presenred sclf-managemenr [autogestionl to us ac the be-ginning of the 1970s. Thank God, no one is talking about self-manage-ment my more! Each person has gone back to his place, md everyone hascome m his senses. But for Dassault, self-management is the following:They want the hospital's cleaning ladies to operate on w! And it's thesegeneral assemblies of surgeons, nurses, the cashier, che social worker, andthe women who wash the Aoors chat will decide by vote whether che pa- tient has an appendicitis rather chm bronchitis! That's exactly what Plato is saying about the Athenian democracy, because it decides by vote. As co the domain where that vote cakes place, that's covered over.

Once chis charge has been made, we do get to the jusci6.carion of hissecond navigation, of his drutrros pious. It's to say that the situation wouldnevertheless be even worse if, when there arc grammata, written laws inthe city, elected magistrates or magistrates drawn by lot would be permit-ted to do whatever suits each one: "He who dared to do that would com-mit a wrong one hundred times worse [than the enslavement of medical,naval, etc., and political practice to the written letter! and would annihi-late all activity more surely still than the written lecccr was doing" (300b).Thus, a.s long and detailed as the critique and the charge have been, sud-denly, chc justi6.cacion for the second choice, for the least bad of the so-lutions, is short, arriving unexpectedly without truly being grounded orworked out. What docs the Stranger say? That there arc "laws chat resultfrom multiple trials md errors, each article of which has been laid down On Pl,,:oi Statesman

by the people upon the counsel and exhortation of well-intentioned

counselors" (ibid.); that these laws are "'imitations of the truth, traced outas perfectly as possible undtr the in,piration of those who know" (3ooc). Herc's the first new thing in relation to all that has just been read: lawslaid down on the basis of great experience and after numerous trials anderrors! This law has therefore not been written by chance or because itwas liked a lot in 506 a.c.L, in rhe time of Cleisthencs. No, it's on the ba-sis of multiple trials and errors and of great experience, tit peirllS pol/isboob}. Of coutsc, we nevertheless find here another nasty remark: It's notthe crowd, the mob, that was able to establish these laws all by iuclf; skill-ful, learned [savanu], and well-intentioned counselors had to know howto convince it. And, after much cxenion and persuasion, the people fi-nally laid down some good laws. Parenthetically, let w observe that this strange combination oflong ex-perience and good counseling nonetheless assumes: (1) that the crowd iscapable of distinguishing bad advice ftom good advice; and (2) that, aftertrials and errors and a number of experiences, it is capable of learning.Both these things go entirely against what was said previously. But let'spass over that. It being understood that laying down laws enslaves reality, that it'stherefore an error, transgressing these very laws would be an errorsquared, hamarti,,u,UJs hamartimll poU,,p/,u;on {ibid.}. Ir's for that reasontherefore that this second navigation must be accepted. When the lawsarc laid down, no one is to act against them, even if, in all domains, theyarc but an imitation of reality. That's why we said that the genuine states-man, who himself is not satisfied with imitations but who is in directcouch with the uuch, won't worry about laws; rather, he will lay themdown according to what he thinks is good. l'lato concludes this passage and then comes to the typology ofregimes, saying that each of them will be all the better after the laws, thegrammata, have been laid down by uuc knowers of statesmanship and ofhuman affairs. Herc's a reminder that I think is completely indispensablefor undemanding the basic argument being presented in this passage. Burfirst we have to explicate the implicit postulates that underlie everythingand that arc outrageous. There arc at least rwo of them. First postulate: There exists one and only one orthi pot;,,;,,. Thar goesso much without saying that it is never discussed anywhere in Plato. Andit is practically never discussed among political philosophers: none of Smri,wr ofApril 23, 198/f 141

them discuss the fact that there exists one and only one orthi politeia yeteach puts forward his own orthi politeia. Exceptions can be made, ofcourse: a litdc bit in Aristotle, a good deal in Montesquieu (correspon-dence of the best regime with "gcographic:ar conditions, and so on). Butultimately, for most of chem and for the most prominent, there exists ajwc and correct orthi po/itna, and only one. Second posrulatc in Plato: This ortl,; poli~ia is defined by a single char-acteristic, a single trait, the tpistimi of he who rules. This is knowledge,sapience, wisdom, but not wisdom in the loose sense of the term; it's chcknowledge of he who rules. These two postulates arc, of course, quite connected and end in thesame paradox: If there is but a single just politeia, chat's because all theochers arc more or less bad imitations of reality. From then on, the royalman alone, endowed with this q,iltimi, will know how to define it andfix it in place. But what tpi.Jtimi? Let's return to the first postulate. This orthi poliuiA is unique becauseall the others can only be systems of laws--which laws suffer both frombeing, ontologically, only mimimata, imitations for want of the truethings, and from always wearing themselves out in trying co "cover" real-ity. One cannot fix on paper, and especially not once and for all, charac-teristics like the community of goods and of women (the &public) or theinitial equal division of lands (the Laws). All these things are ceaselesslyand everywhere different. One never steps into the same river twice; a citynever remains like itself. an individual is never twice the same. Therefore,one can never lay down the same rule. But the whole problem concernsprecisely the distance that is put between this whole 8.ux, this multiple,and the universal rule. And Plato's sophism here is in the absolutizationof the terms. Aristotle later saw this in the Politic1, as well as in book 5 ofthe Nichomachean Ethics: the opposition between the abstracc universaland concrete reality-the Heraditean 8.u.x, let w say-is presented as ab-solute, totally incompatible. Seeing that an abstract universal rule cannever be perfectly congruent with a reality, because things always change,Plato wants to conclude from this that it cannot even be so during fifteenyears, or fifteen weeks, or even fifteen days. It cannot be so in a radicalway, and there's no recourse. Now, that's nor correct. First of all, of course, there's the possibilityof changing the law. In the second place, there's the whole theory of eq-uity Aristotle later introduced in book 5 of the Nichomachean Ethics."' On Pla:o's Statesman

Aristotle's cheory of equicy is as follows: There's always a gap becween the

written laws and what the jurists call the concrete consistency of the case.Formally, the law punishes SOmeone who has killed someone else. Bur inrralicy, it's never just "someone" who kills "someone else." It's, for exam-ple, Mr. Smith who, exasperated with Mrs. Smith, slits her throat. Or it'sMr. Jones who, discovering arsenic in his soup, strangles Mrs. Jones. Butit's always something other than what the law describes. Only, this essen-tial gap becween the rule and the concrete case isn't absolute, and it's thejudge who is going to fill it in. That's the meaning of equity. It restoresthe universal in the singular; it reestablishes the general spirit of the law inthe concrete case. Aristotle's celebrated observation is chat it's the judgewho settles rhe matter; he decides in the way in which the legislatorwould have settled mam:rs had he known, had he been present. Thejudge puts himself in the place of the legislator. This means that in a society, in a rights-based Stace, one ruled bylaws-I point out to you that a rights-based State, a State ruled by laws,was, in face, defined for the first time in the Statt'.mzan-the legislator is not rhe sole one to be legislator. And that's another huge weakness ofPlato's argument. The judge, too, is the legislator: he necessarily has tostand in for the law, which is indeed like an "ignorant and brutal man"who always repeats the same thing, whereas reality is always different.And legislation has foreseen this itself by establishing courts, diltastfria,and giving them not only the right but the duty to interpret the laws.And behind the interpretation of the law, in fact, is hidden a laying downof rules. Ultimately, in a sense it c.an be said chat not only the judge butevery individual lays down laws. This is so from the moment there's a lawthat says: Each has the right to act in the sphere that is acknowledged asbeing hers individually. Let's take a trivial example: a cafe terrace, emprytables, chairs. I sit down on one of the~ chairs. I thus exercise my right,which passes by way of a whole series of rules, to sit down on this chair.From the moment I'm seated on this chair, I have created a legal situa-tion. I can't be told, "Get out of chat chair." I sac there because the seatwas free, because there were no other places. The concretization of the le-gal system goes so far as to include the concrete acts through which, byoperating within the network of rights and duties conferred upon me bylegislation, I concretizc them. If someone rushed into this room righrnow and said, "We've decided to hold a seminar in Sanskrit here at halfpast twelve," he'd be committing an infraction against the legal system Smiinar ofApril 23, 1986 143

that organiz.cs, covers, and protects what we a.re doing: the whole pyramidthat scares with the French Constitution and reaches down to the rcguJa-tions of the t.colc des Hauccs £.cudcs en Sciences Socialcs. ~ But what docs chat mean? It means that no human system can scayalive--1 shall return co chis point at length, and it is, moreover, as youperhaps know, one of the major themes to be found in my criticism of to-calirarianism and even of the soft forms of bureaucracy-unless it postu-lates, ~en under slavery, some minimum capacity for autonomy amongits subjects. And this is, as a matter of fact, the ultimate contradiction ofhcteronomous systems, at least from the moment when these systems arenor complcrdy inccrnalized by thclf subjects. So long as a slave, in thesouthern United States, picks cotton devotedly because that's the waythings are, because for him it's nearly a divine mission, heteronomy pros-pers. Bue let him say, "I am picking cotton for that bastard of an owner,"starting from chat moment it's over; there's already an antinomy in the~seem. In face, such total internaliz.ation has existed. It's another task tosec where and when and up to what point. The fact is that it happens cobreak down in certain societies starting from a cerca.in moment. So, Plato, absolutizing the distinction, the gap between the abstractuniversal and the concrete panicular, doesn't see the necessary parcicipa-cion of each in che concrecizacion of the law. Bur neither docs he see, cer-tainly, something else. And here, you can have some fun, if you want, inobserving how the pseudo-Moderns are absolutely in thrall co Plato andone of the reasons why they spend their time trying to refute Plato, risingup against logo-phallo-whaccver-centrism. Roland Barthes says: All lan-guage is fascist. 6 Why? Because I cannor speak while saying, "Broum-bram-groum." I have co pronounce French phonemes, and I have to saythem in the order [l"omlcution] of phonemes imposed by French phonet-ics. These series [conslcutions] of phonemes also have to form words thatare in the French lexicon. And these words have co be arranged accordingto French syntax. Herc one scops, becawe even Barthes would nor dare tosay chat semantics is fascism. Now, where does chis asininity that "All lan-guage is fascisr" come from-it being, moreover, a typically provocativeand stupid paradox formulated on the basis of a phrase lifted from Ro-man Jakobson? As a matter of fact, where it comes from is the inability tosec that the social being of man (anthTOpOJ) implies at once a rule and adistance from the rule. A life in which we had rules made co fit us the waya good tailor makes our clothes fit would indeed be totaJ slavery. It would On P/.a:ni S1,1.tcsman

be the ideal penal colony. But it's precisely in the twofold existence of arule and of a certain gap in relation to this rule that what we can have asauconomy qua social being.5: is established. It's a gap, first of all. becausethe rule not being able to cover all the cases obliges us to find our way inconcrete situations, not only legally immaterial ones but even legally per-tinent, important ones, in which nothing is prescribed. And it's a gap, inthe second place, precisely because, the rule never being able to beadapted to reality, we are called upon from time to rime to call ic intoquestion. But in order co call a rule into question, there has to be a rule.And if we are to be able to call rhe rule into question, we mustn't be therule, or the rule mustn't be us. Ir mustn't stick to us the way the runic ofNessus clings to Hercules. And Hercules is killed by it because it's a poi-soned tunic. That's really the image; it would be a poisoned runic. Wewould be able to rip off such a shirt only by ripping off our skin. It's inand through this gap that we can live socially and individually. This iswhat is totally absent from Plato's text and what, for centuries and cen-turies and still today, has handicapped philosophy in general and politicalphilosophy in panicular. And this is tied up with some very profoundquestions, like the whole question of creation and the creativity of thesingular human being and of society taken as a whole. I come to the second implicit postulate: This unique orthi poliuia isdefined by epistimi. But one can only ask: What epistimi? Given thecharacter of public affairs, it is pretty much clear that this epistimi is, atleast potentially, an tpistimi of the totality. Moreover, this is said more orless explicitly in the dialogue, since ultimately it's a matter of having aknowledge chat decides what particular art is to enter into aaion, at whatmoment, and under what conditions; it's a knowledge, as Plato says, thatis epitalttilti {26oc), that orders the other forms of knowledge. Ir is here, moreover, that the Stranger hangs the apparently obviow butin fact perfectly fallacious corollary, that if that's how things arc, it's im-possible for this epistimi to be shared by the totality or by the greatestnumber. Remember the comparison, which is logically quite intolerable,with the an of playing the lyre. Then with medicine and navigation. Thisis an intolerable comparison, not so much on account of the patient's vol-untariness or involuntariness, as DiCS's translation somewhat foolishlysays, but on account of the inexistence of a uchr,i that is recognized byPlato in the Protagoras and that is occulted here when he speaks of this Sm,;,.,,, ofApril 23, 1986 145

gap between the universal and the particular~ccultcd, that is, in theprincipal thesis. So, tpistbni of the whole. But to what docs chis idea of the epi1tim( ofeverything refer? Herc we're completely in chaos, fully in the abyss. For,this idea of rhe tpistbni of the whole contradicts what is nevertheless oneof Plato's central theses, and what is the Greek remainder in Plato--which is granted in the TI1114na and which returns in the Stausman apro-pos of chat story abom the abstract universal law and the concrete. Thatis to say, the idea that there's an incliminablc matter, called chOra in the Timarus, the ari ginommon, the eternally becoming, the aJways becom-ing, or the apriron in the Phikbus, or not-being in the Sophist. Th.at is tosay, a huge portion of indetcrminarencss in what is, the recognition ofthis fact. Therefore, a contradiction bcrwccn this epistimi of the wholeand this chOra, this unknowable pan of matter. I am not harking back upon the metaphysical, properly ontological as-pect of this, which we have already spoken about. That is to say, the factthat, ultimately, the two clements were there from the origin in rhe Greekimaginary: the idea of a total knowledge; the idea of a matter that is inpan resistant to such a knowledge. And this has yielded two major op-cions in rhe philosophical tradition, beginning already with the pre-So-cratics. One of these options, the Parmenidean option, was to say: Mar-ter, the indeterminate, is not. Alone is what is; and what is is what isentirc:ly determined. This was later taken up by Plato, with the result thatthe other path, the tradition ofHeraclitw, Democritus, and the Sophists,has more or less been set aside throughout the history of philosophy. ButPlato, like Aristotle, ncvcnheless retained something of this Greek trace.In their ontology, there is an irreducible portion of matter, that is to say,an ultimately unknowable portion. That portion can be formed; it isformed, moreover, by the demiurge, but it's formed only to the extentthat it c.an be. It isn't the demiurgc who created matter; he simply formedit (Timaew). And it therefore remains something indeterminate or irra-tional. Lacer on came Christian theology's desperate struggles with all thatand its anempts to eliminate it.

But the paradox here, and it's even a double paradox, is that:

1. This epistimi of the whole, which is recognized in general in Plato and

(),i Pl.ataI Statesman

here in particular hintingly {4 mi-mot} as being in fact fmpossible, unre-

alizable, nevertheless becomes the measure for defining the correctregime, the orthi polittia.2. And the other paradox' is that the epistimi of this anir basililtos, theknowledge of this royal man, which makes him superior to the law andleads him to offer his techni as law, is, as a nutcer of fact, a knowledge ofthe singular and of the concrete. That is to say, something quite the con-trary of what was thought of as tpistimi.

Of course, Plato doesn't say, as Aristotle said later on, that there is noscience of the universal. Bue the idea is already in him. It's the Socraticdefinition of knowledge, which is found, for example, in the ThtadttuJ:One must always try to condense the plurality of things into a single ti-dos. In the Thtatutu.s, the discussion is: What is epistimi? Imelligentthough he is, Theaetetus foolishly responds by enumerating the knowl-edge of this, that, and the other thing. And Socrates corrects him by say-ing: OK, bm I wasn't asking you how many kinds of knowledge there arebut what the meaning of knowledge is and what nevertheless makes allthese kinds of knowledge you are enumerating knowledge. wrb.at is beingsought is the tidoJ, the Idea of knowledge. So, there's a second paradox. Whereas, according to Plato himself, thtreis knowledge only of tidoJ, here the statesman is presented to us as some-one who is tpiJtimfm precisely by virtue of the fact that he can closely fol-low each singular situation. These are Plato's difficulties, which weren't resolved in the &public(wrinen prior to the StattJman) and won't be resolved in the l.AwJ (writ-ten after it). They will simply be covered over by the recognition of thefact chat there cannot in reality be, or that it is very improbable that theremight ever be, an ideal regime; that, therefore, there can be only an ap-proximation, a mimiJiJ. Plato says this dearly in the Ulws; and in light ofthe Stawman, it would be true even for the Republic.

Whac I mean is that, from the political point of view, Plato's thoughtyields the absolutely inaccessible regime of the Stakm,an, where an indi-vidual, chis epi.Jtimim, is at the bedside of each person to tell him what codo. That isn't even a coherent fiction-which the &public is-but ic's inrelation to this noncoherent fiction chat reality is judged. This is the 5,,.;,.,,, ofApril 23, 1986 147

besetting sin of every idealise philosophy---onc constructs a fiction tha1

doesn't cohere and then says: The real world is false, bad, inadequate inrelation to this noncoh.crcnc 6crion. Next, there arc two other fictions, co-hcrcnc ones, indeed, but very improbable. The first (the &public) is im-possible by Plato's own admission. As for the Laws, the regime describedtherein is even less dose to the perfect State than the one in chc &public.But these difficulties, these aporias of Plato's thought as they arc centrallyex.pounded in the Stau.rman---which people don't generally look at; theylook at the &public or the Laws--arc just simply covered over by the "so-lution" given beforehand, in the &pub/fr, and afterward, in the Laws. Weshall talk about chis story again. I still have a number of things to say toy~u about the Statesman, but I'm stopping here to leave room for discus-s10n.

Questions It senm to me that what jean-Pierre ~rnant and others have studied 1. undn the name ofmCtis in Greelt thought is the meaning ofconjuncture or of kairos. Doesn't that play a rok in Plato? Here, when you say that it's lmowkdge ofthe singular and ofthe concrete, one assumes that it's the same thing m mCtis. 7 -Yes, but mitis is, as a matter of fact, opposed co epistimi. -Has he compkuly eliminated mCtis? -The capital, primary, princeps example of mitis is Ulysses-poiumitis, as Homer says. Ulysses is someone who is capable of finding his bearings again [se retrouver] in each concrete situation, most of the rime by inventing solutions, stratagems, crafty cricks, and so on. Remem- ber Polyphemw's cave, Ulysses' companions hidden under the bellies ofthe sheep, and so on. "W'hat's your name?" "My name is Nobody."Then,it's the Cyclops who yells that it's Nobody who blinded him! {cf. Odyssey9.355-365} Mitis is the capacity to invent, to find one's bearings again ineach particular situation. And that gift, in the Greek mind-set, is notshared equally by all men. Otherwise, Ulysses would not be the exampleof che person who can invent something in all situations, and therewouldn't be any examples of particularly stupid people, in this regard atleasr. Now, in Plato, che question isn't really posed like that. Plato never talksabout mitis but contrasts, juxtaposes, phronbis and epistimi. And in the Un .t'kltoi Statesman

Stattsman, this yields something entirely incongruous that doesn't hold up:the royal man is he who has eplStimi but who is to govern rMta phroniseOs.Why? It comes in here Ii~ a hair in yow soup. If he has tpistimi, hedoesn't need phronbis. In Aristotle and among the Greeks in general,there's phronisis precisely where there is no tpistimi. It cannot be said of amathema[ician who proves a theorem that he is making we of phronisis;it's epistimi. One can speak of the phronisis of a mathematician in the ob-jectives he sets for himself. And when David Hilbert uied to prove at allcosts noncomradicrion in mathematics, he transgressed phronisis. He saidsomething that ~n't very prudent. It was very fenile, very fecund, but itcame tumbling back down upon Hilbert's head because the opposite wasproved: that one couldn't show this noncontradicrion. But as for miti.s, it's a domain in which epiJtimi can say nothing. Ifepistimi can say something, it's a certain knowledge; there's nothing tomake do about [au dlbrouilkr]. Thar's what I tried to underscore, butwithout introducing the term mitis-you're not wrong to have done so;but once again, Plato doesn't talk about mitis. That's the paradoxical sit- uation of the Statesman, where the sole true regime and the man who in-carnates it are defined by epistimi, whereas the critique of the laws isgrounded upon the fact chat there can be no universally valid laws. This is something that poses a huge question, and Plato is obviously aware of it; otherwise, he wouldn't have written the Republic or the Liws. And ifone makes of the royal man of the Statesman someone who has mitis, then one makes Themistocles into one of them-he who commissionedthe mob to row at Salamis. It's truly an abomination, but that's mitis. Noscience could tell Themisrocles: Here's the stratagem to get the Persiansto fight in the strait of Salamis rather than on the high sea.s. I don't knowif I have answered your question, but it's one of the text's large arorias.

2. Apropos ofmedicine. Can't ont jwt co1lcll«k that mm are not siclt, and so, as a consequence, the compaf'Uon falls apart--and then medicine isn't a scimu?

-Of course, medicine isn't a scienct.

-ls this something implicit in Plato? -Quire so. It's in the implicit pan of the argument. In the text of theStatesman, medicine or navigation arc as a matter of fact on the side ofuchni in the sense defined in the Protagor41. That is to say, a type ofknow-how specific ro an object rhat is able to take particular circum- Smiinar ofApril 25, 1986 149

stances into account. The whole passage that runs from 198 to 300 is pre-cisely that. It is absurd to say in advance to a capcain of a ship how he'llhave to navigate. According to the winds, the tides, the currcncs, themoon, the state of the ship, and so on, he'll make do and will decide howto run the ship. That's why Plato lodges this ironic charge against theAthenian democracy, that it has decided once and for all how the ship ofthe cicy is ro be governed; next, it draws by lot people who arc going cogovern it according to these written instructions-the height of ridicu-lousncss!-and then anyone, once these magistrates' terms in office arcover, can drag them before the coun and accuse them, saying: You haveviolated the laws because you didn't continue co fire, whereas the laws or-der it, and so on and so forth. This charge is unacceptable. And Platoknows it , .:ry well. In the ext, navigation and medicine are completely on che side ofk.nowledre chat deals with the concrete. And chis, in my opinion, only underscor cs the aporia, the antinomy between epistimi in the generalsense-chat of the Theartttus, but which is wed in the Statesman withoutany warning-and those ttchnai that are technai of particular things.There are two distinctions that include an element of professional knowl-edge. And that's che discussion from the Protagoras: the stratigoi were or-dered to sail to Sicily, but no one at Athens required that they gee therein ten days or by setting the sails in this or that way. That's the question:only true navigators can do it. Now, there's a double shift. There's anepistimi that knows everything. And the ttchnai that are used as examplesin the Statesman-medicine, navigation-are types of know-how that do,after all, include some portion of knowledge. If one doesn't positivelyknow che anatomy of the human body, one can't do medicine. But know-ing anatomy and pharmacology is far from being sufficient for trearing apatient. If one doesn't know the cardinal points, one cannot navigate, butthat isn't enough either. Herc, then, you have two parts: one part char isalmost or completely cod.ifiable and another char involves adaptation tothe circumstances. And then you have politics properly speaking, where one doesn't trulyknow what is codi6ablc. This implies a familiarity with things: if theAthenians decide to send an expedition to Sicily, they have to know thatSicily is an island, that there are so many inhabitants, that the Syracusansare like chat, and so on. But all that is a contingent type of knowledge.Today, it'.~ Sicily; tomorrow it'll be Egypt. So, one can "inform oneselfljO On P!Ato! Staresman

about," but one doesn't know in advance. No one can know all thosethings just like that. E-icn the CIA had to learn that there was_ a Icade_, ofthe Iranian Shiites who was called Khomeini. And then thts acqwredknowledge involves above all a judgment that adapts itself to par_ticularsituations m a much greater degree than in the case of t«hni, which m·eludes an instrument of knowledge. Now these three articulations aren't made in the text. They are crushedor cove~ over by the idea of a total ,pistimi that could be seated besideeach person and tell him with certainty what he has to do or not do.

3. Hill Pillto chosm, b,,w,m th, Republic and th, Laws, dnnomuy. then th, mlightm,d tinpot? What he offers in the S,au,man would be an enlightened superdespot.An enlightened despot or a technocrat has never claimed to tell eachperson what he has to do. Now, that's Plato's literal expression:paraltathimmos, at the bedside of each. When we leave this {seminar!room at I P.M., it's the royal man who's going to tell us whether or not weshould go to lunch. So it's beyond enlightened despotism. As for theLaws, it's not democracy; it's a regime of another type. 4. Apropos of Barthe, and th, fascism ofall illngw,g,.

Barthcs and all of structuralism, this is an enormous abuse surround-

ing a phrase from Jakobson that was correct for one pan of language.Jakobson had said that, from the point of view of structure, language islike totalitarian regimes: everything that is not obligatory is forbidden;and everything that is not forbidden is obligatory. What did he mean? Hewas wrong, moreover, save perhaps from the point of view of phonetics.And still there, I don't know. It is said that in French cenain sequences[conslcutions] of phonemes arc forbidden. But even that is quite relative."Doukipudonktan," Raymond Qucncau writes at the beginning of Zaz.i,dam k mlm,. And this order [conslcurion] of phonemes belonging 10 dif-ferent words is forbidden a priori and yet perfectly pronounceable by aFrenchman. If one spoke like that for ten minutes, one would line upfifty series [conslcurions) of phonemes that au absolutely forbidden inFrench phonetics. For, French phonetics is valid only for the constructionof each le«me. Here we have the obligatory part of the forbidden. Butthat ceases to be true for the sequencings [tonslcwtions] in spoken French. Sm.inar ofApril 2j, 1986 ISi

And even assuming that that would be cruc for phonetics and forgrammar, this rule of "'everything that is not obligatory is forbidden andeverything that is not forbidden is obligatory" is no longer true of se-mantics. For, semantics is precisely a domain in which ocher relations arcconstantly being created by the living speaker of a given tongue. Ir's inthis sense chat Banhcs's phrase is an asininity and a bad interprctacion ofwhat initial structuralism in language was, Jakobson himself very dearlytracing out some lines between the pan I'd call ensidic and what he him-self called the pottic pan oflanguage.Seminar of April 30, 1986

V. The Three Digressions (Continued)

I hope today to be able to finish with chis Statesman, which has cost usso much labor. After having commented on the two and a half definitions,rhe eight incidental points, and the 6rst two digressions-the myth of theage of Cronw and the form of regimes-we were right in the middle ofthe third digression, which is, in a sense, like a third definition of thestatesman.

And we were saying chat this third digression has at least rwo hiddenpresuppositions. The first is that there exists one republic, one city, onepolil, one just poliuia, and only one. Thar may seem evident, but it's justas well contestable. For, a sea of questions then opens up: A straight andupright polis, an orthi one, but orthi in relation to what? And under whatconditions? Herodotus had already spoken of each regime's adaptation[11.ppropriatirmJ to each people; as for Montesquieu, he speaks of adapta-tion to "nacwal" conditions; and Marx, of the state of the forces of pro-duction, although he assumes that there will be a single orthi politei11. atthe end of history. This is, therefore, an enormow problem. Plato doesn'tdiscuss it and instead decrees: One orthi politeia, and only one. This ob-viowly presupposes chat there exists what in mathematics would be calleda good hierarchical ordering of the differem types of polittta, of ciry, withthe orthi politeia ac the swnmit.

Ifj On PL:tr/s Statesman

A second implicit postulate: This orthi poliuia, this correct, straight,

upright city-upstanding, with the others recumbent-is defined byepisttmt. And here the criteria for this tpistimt that Plato is constantly w-ing are sometimes a sort of absolute knowledge, sometimes a knowledgethat also implies some techniques for its application. In shon, it could besaid-but with some question marks-that chis knowledge of the states-man, of the royal man, chat defines this city has to be made of a scientific,"epistemic" knowledge, of something that concerns the essence of things,and at the same time has to include, in light of the examples Plato bringsin to support his thesis (medicine, the "governance" of a boat), a uchntin the practical sense of the term, a knowledge of the particular circum-stances, a knowledge that contains in itself the virtual possibility of adapt-ing to every set of circumstances that might present itself. So here we have a first paradox concerning this tpistimi, concerningthis knowledge: that, while being-sometimes hintingly and elsewhereexplicicly-rccognizcd all along as inaccessible, it becomes an absolute measure of reality. Why inaccessible? WelJ, we already know why in the &public:. There are the essences, the ousiai, and there is something chat is beyond essences and that is the Good, genuine being, which itself is nor accessible co knowledge. Plato says himself that this Good char is beyond essences, chis agathon, "can hardly be seen" j517b--c~. (And this "seen" is certainly metaphorical, but not that much so: in all chis, the metaphor ofvision plays a cardinal role. Vision, speculation, contemplation, thtOria, all char comes from the verb to see.) In any~. what truly is isn't visiblewith th< <y<s of the body. A, for the <y<s of the soul, they can hardly aatcha glimpse of it. And anyway, this agathon is not discursively demonstrable. Plato says the same thing in many other ccx.cs. In the Phudrw, for ex-ample. And in the Sromth LetttT, which is ~rhaps authentic, perhaps in-authentic, but which in any case was written by someone who knew his Plato very well. The central philosophical passage could have been writ-ten by Plato. h's the historical details of chis text that arc improbable, asM. I. Finley rightly says.' And what this S,,,,nth l,tt,r describes is, as inthe &public, a labor of preparation, on the order of discussion, study, dis-cursiveness, dc6nition, proof; but the sight of the agathon itself comes a-aiphnis, suddenly, like a Aame chat rises up after one has rubbed oneselfwith the thing for a long time. This much talked-about image from theStventh Utter fully reminds us of ccnain passages from the great mystics S,mi"4r ofApri/ JO, 1986 115

about periods of drought and the need for an ongoing effort [travail per-ma-nmt], during which nothing is gw.rancced, bll[ at the end of which,perhaps, the deity or the light or transcendence appears co che mystic. Allthat is already there in the Sevmth Utur. And that means what, ultimately? That genuine epistimi is practicallyinaccessible for those who arc human. Or accessible in very contingentfashion. Whence the paradox chat arrives when chis inaccessible knowl-edge becomes the measure of something real We arc obliged co measureour earthly cities, what we do, our Constitmions, and so on, by the yard-stick of this knowledge. Bue there's more, for how arc the rest of us, we who arc neither chisphilosopher nor chis royal man, this statesman, going to recognize himwhen he turns up? The best·case scenario--it's not explicitly said, bur ic's the only conclwion to be drawn-is that we're dealing with an act of faith: That's the royal man; what he says is better than the law. The only thing is to follow him. It must be said parenthetically that Aristotle, who is always for the reign of law, takes up a rather analogow idea in a rather strange passage from the Politics when, in the middle of his discussion of the different forms of city, he suddenly speaks of the possible appearance in the city ofan exceptional man. And Aristotle says that, starting from the momentwhen that man appears, all the rest comes to a halt. The citizens recog·nizc him as such, as an exceptional man, and what he says becomes, in accnain fashion, law. One can go on and on about that. What does Aris·totle, who always remains very pragmatic, have in view? ls this excep·tional man exceptional perhaps in his ability ro convince people, to carrychem away? In any case, chis idea is also there in Aristotle. And do weneed, in addition, to mention Alexander the Great, whose accession topower was contemporary with the Politics? OK, but the problem remains: it's not enough to have this royal man inthe city; che city must still-and Plato doesn't talk about chis, except inone place to say that it's practically impossible-recognize this royal man.Or else it would be necessary to count among the royal man's faculties-which would perhaps be a more favorable interpretation-the ability toconvince the city that he's the royal man, chat his authority must there·fore be accepted. This is in no way discussed here, and it is highly doubt·ful, because, according ro everything Plato says elsewhere, the qualities On Plato's Statesman

that according to him are necessary in order to convince people are notat all the ones that make the true philosopher, he who possesses trueknowledge. Thus, this first paradox is doubled:

1. How could someone possess this absolute, inaccessible tpistimi that

nevertheless is the measure of che real? l. And if someone can possess ic, how will he be recognized by theochers as possessing it?

And there's a second paradox concerning chis epistimi, to which I drew

your attention last time. It's this sort of combination of the universal andthe concrete. The knowledge of the royal man, the knowledge that ren-ders him superior co the law and that ensures chat he can "furnish his artinstead of and in place of the laws" {297a}. well, it's precisely a knowledgethat includes che singular and the concretc--and even the outer limit ofrhe concrete, since the statesman has to be at the bedside of each citizen,paraltathimenos, chat's the Greek expression. And that's completely thecontrary of what one generally understands, and of what Plato himselfunderstands, by epistimi--that is to say, a knowledge that really intendsthe universal. And it is defined as such in the TktUtttu.s, in the Republic,and so on. Thw, we have here a kind of vacillation with respect to the prior con-ception. That is the conception in particular &om the Rrpub/ic, where it'sthe philosophers who govern the city, after having been selected as such,after having spent the bulk of their lives preparing themselves &om thestandpoints of dialectic and mathematics for the theory, the vision, theintuition of the Ideas. And we find here, once again, the same paradox: nothing says chat, assuch, these Ideas, these essences, render the philosopher of the Republiccapable of managing, as is said today, of governing in singular, concretesituations. And that, indeed, is something Plato catches a glimpse of ashis work unfolds-perhaps also a.s a function of the direct or indirect ex-perience of his affairs in Sicily, a.s a function of his relations with Dion.This is perhaps also what later led him (thinking of his captivity atDionysiw's?) to wax ironic 'in th~ Phi/.rbus about someone who knows theIdea of jwcice but who doesn'c know his way home. This is indeed an oldtheme in Greek philosophical anecdotes: remember Thales, who looks up S,,,.in•r ofApril JO, 1986

at the sky and falls into a hole. In the Phi~bw, Plato continues chis be-nign, benevolent sort of disparagement, by citizens, of the philosopherwho misses what's right in front of him bccawc his gaze is elsewhere. Andthere is perhaps a trace of that in chis kind of vacillation in the Statesman. But you sec the strange logica.l situation created at this point: the chirddigression criticizes the law for its essential deficiency, for the gap it can-not fill in between universality and the concrete. And in the Statesman,the law is taken as the abstract universal. Once again, it is defined as "theignorant and arrogam man" who is always repeating the same thing.Therefore, it cannot adapt itself to concrete situations. Whence our ratherintense sense of unca.sc:, almost like an emptiness: the Idea of justice quaeidos cannot be transformed into law, into a simple abstract universal rule.But at the same time, chis royal man is presented to us as he who is cheIdea of jwtice, he who makes that Idea present in reality in order for eachcitizen, at each moment and under all his life circwnstances, co be toldwhat is to be done and what is not to be done. But on what basis can hedo so, if not on the basis of both a knowledge of the Ideas and a knowl-edge of singularities? And all that ultimately leaves w wavering. which no doubt prepares usfor the regime later described in the laws, where you have magistrateswho arc more or less elected by the rest of the citizenry but at the sametime you have the much talked-about "nocturnal council" whose compo-sition and recruitment arc rather precisely defined, but whose role is not.It's a sort of secret oligarchy chat watches over and keeps under surveil-lance what is done in the city, chat also practically watches over the mag-isuaccs and keeps them under surveillance, and that brings together in agroup some people who arc chosen in terms of their cursus honorum. In-deed, this is the first time such an idea appears in a Greek text, whereas itwas quite basic in Rome, because the Roman Senate was made up of peo-ple who had followed a (UrsUS honorum, performed a series of magistra-cies. Thi~ is a necessary condition even if it is not a sufficient one. Andthe first time we have this in a Greek text is in the middle of the fourthcentury, in the LJJw1, apropos of this nocturnal council. In the Platoniccontext, chat council is, as far as possible, composed of people who com-bine some universal knowledge [un savoir universe/] with a son of busi-ness acumen [une sorte de connaissance des ajfaills], as the journalistswould say today. The {French} Socialists failed {it is said} because they :n Platof Statesman

didn't have "business acumen" when they ca.me in back in 1981; and thenthey learned business after two or three years in government. and so onand so forth. So the vacillations of the Statesman can be understood if they areplaced back within this evolution in Plato's thought, which begins withthe Gorgias, when Socrates says to Callicles, who is presented as a politi-cian: It isn't you who are the true statesman, it's me (521d}. The truestatesman is the philosopher, he who knows how to tell the definition ofthe jwr and the unjust. From there one goes on to the Republic, with thephilosopher who governs. Then the Stausman gives w this definition of the royal man-an inaccessible definition, however, and one that com-bines heterogeneous and even contradictory elements. And finally we touch down in the city of the Laws, where the government is almost dem- ocratic--or aristocratic, in Aristotle's sense, since the magistrates are elected and not drawn by lot-but in which, at the same time, there's this nocturnal council. Now, this text also contains some completely opposite implications. One sees here how extraordinarily rich a text can be and how vastly far- reaching thought can outstrip [dlpasstr} the explicit intentions of the au- thor and even lead to conclwions completely opposed to his own. Such inexhaustibility would perhaps rightly be one of the criteria for great works of art, which one can reread or listen to for the one hundred and seventeenth time while !:till discovering therein a little something more. Of course, in all chis, it's Castoriadis who's talking, who's reading Plato, and who begins by picking our a few cherries or pulling on a variety of strings that are in it in order co see what comes along with them. And I have the right to do so provided chat it not be arbitrary and also because clearly, as we have tried to show, the text is full of anomalies. Let's rake this argument then that Plato secs against himself in order to say char, ulcimately, the government of a royal man isn't possible (287a-b): How could someone be at the bedside-parakathimtnos---of all the citizens so as co order each person exactly and rigorously co do what he is to do? That isn't possible. No governor, no government can be everywhere ar the same time and anend to each case. And here, I'm ask- ing you to enter into the skin of the philosopher, of philosophers, of phi- losophy, and to take ideas absolutely. To say that there is only one man in the ciry who knows statesmanship means literally that he has to be hov- ering over everyone's head rwenry-four hours a day in order to tell each s,,,,;,.,,, ofApril 30, 1986 119

person what he is to do. And that is, moreover, the inference Plato draws.For, Plato isn't like writers today in 1986: when he says ab, he concludesc. And here he secs that c doesn't hold up. And he therefore deduces fromthis that one must retract ab: no one man-be he royal--can govern thecity. So, there's a second navigation, a second best: written "letters," thosegrammata, those immobile, dead rules, laid down once: and for all on pa-per, which always repeat the same thing "like an ignorant peasant." Buranyway they're a substitute, the least bad one possible, for the inability ofthe royal man, were he to exist, to carry out his role effectively. Therefore, on the one hand, we have this inability, this impossibility:The royal man paraluithimmoJ is untenable. The only solution is thegrammata. But on the other hand, there's a second impossibility: Thesegrammata are necessarily and by their essence distant from reality, inca-pable as such of managing reality's details and of adapting to the way re-ality evolves. And that is something that Plato was the first to remind usof, co teach us, to unveil to us. There is therefore always a necessity, if wchave laws, to fill in this gap becwcen the abstraction of the law and theconcreteness of the real. And chis point is of capital importance, for, as I have reminded you, Aristotle's whole theory of equity in the fifth book ofthe Nichomachean Ethics was later going to come along and be grafted on top of it; next, it yielded Roman aequitas, then the whole theory of legal interpretation for century upon century. This entire theory, and thewhole philosophy of law, is based upon these cwo paragraphs from theStatesman and their innumerable implications. By way of consequence, if we don't simply wane che judge with his eq-uity to intervene after the fact and as a correction, what are we to con-clude? Obviously, that each citizen is interpreter of rhe law for her ownlife. Each citizen has before her this set of abstract rules, but she lives in adiverse, changing reality, a Heraclitean realiry, and she's the only one whomight be able m bridge che two. Also by way of consequence, the task, atchat very moment, of the much talked-about legislator, whoever he mightbe, is che education of citizens, paidria, in such a way and with such anorientation chat these citizens might themselves constantly make up forthe law, that is to say, fill in the gap between the abstraction of the legaluniversal and reality. Each citizen has herself, in a sense, to be judge exanu (as is said in Latin), in advance, of what's going to happen. Let's recall, then, how Aristotle defines what the judge docs when hefinds himself before a concrete case that doesn't as such fit the very ab-160 Un JJl4to"s Statesman

stract mold of the law: A, that moment, the judge has to settle things asthe legislator would h•vc done had he been obliged to be familiar with[co•,..fm] some particular case. The judge brings the legislator back intoactuality; he gives specificity to the law; he makes a sublaw of it in theparticular case. And this sublaw for the particular case is made in thespirit of the general law; that is to say, it takes into account the particularcircumstances but also the spirit of the law, the intentions of the legisla-tor-as one says in philosophy oflaw. The judge performs this combina-tion, makes this synthesis. Let's transpose to the situation described byPlato: the city can truly function with written laws, the much talked-about gramm11ta, only if each citiu:n is capable of performing this laborAristotle imputes to the judge when resolving disputes in litigation, that is to say, only if she is capable of acting in each case as the legislator wouldhave acted had he been familiar with the particular case in question. This is also to say that the city can function only if each citizen is constantlycapable of taising herself up to the level that defines the good legislator. In still other words, there arc two mutually exclusive alternatives: 1. Either the mass of citizens is this son of hopeless morass, anthroponag~/4i, Rodes for ever; and that's what Plato envisages most of the time. In chac case, cherc's noching co be done, because, with or without gramm11ta, the gap between the l•w and reality will always be filled in badly anyway;and, what's more, these gramm11ta will be laid down badly at the outset. In addition, and still wichin the hypothesis thac human beings arc thishopeless herd, these hopeless catde that Plato takes pleasure in descri'>ingco us, one muse chen be a democrac, and this is so according to Plato l.im-sclf, since democracy is, amid corruption, the least bad of regimes. It's aregime that "can never do anything great," as he wrote black on white inthe Statesman [Joial. (He wrote that at the foot of the Acropolis and inthe shadow of the Parthenon! But, well, that's how things arc; a philoso-pher has a right to a certain amount of arbitrariness.) And it can do noth-ing very bad either. Therefore, so long as you live under a corrupt regime,it might as well be a democracy. 1. Or else, then, ic is granted thac the mass of citizens is not for evermerely a morass-which, 'moreover, Plato himself recognizes by contra-dicting himself in 300b, when he says that where there arc written laws incicies, they mustn't be violated, firstly, because one needs written laws-it'.s better than illegality or total anomic--and, secondly, because these Snninar ofApril 30, 1986 161

written laws have been laid down on the basis of experience. Plato saysthis himself, and he who says txpnienu says subjtct capablr ofdC'fuiringan expnitnu. This table I'm leaning on now acquires no experience. If thelaws arc what they arc, let them be rcsprctcd, becawc they crystallize, em-body, incorporate a certain cxpcricnce-----this experience of living men inthe city who have learned, over centuries and decades, that such laws arcless bad than ochers. And at the same time, he says, they have been la.iddown because a few incclligcnt, wise, and subtle persons have known howto persuade the crowd co adopt these grammat4. And here again, a crowdcan be persuaded to adopt good laws only if the crowd is "persuadable,"can be persuaded to accept these good laws. If the crowd were such thatit always Aung itself upon the most corrupt laws presented to it, whatPlato says in 300b would be an absurdity.

Once we accepc chac there mighc be some linle glimmer of hope for chis host of human c.aule, the consequence of the Platonic text is obvious: it's the permanent democratic self.institution of society. Why? Because people must be educ.aced so as to enable them constantly to fill in them- selves this gap between the grammata, the dead leuers of the law, and re- ality; to seat themselves at their own bedsides-since no one else can do it for them: Plaro has acknowledged that. Therefore, each person must, as much as possible, be able to act almost like a royal man in the affairs that regard her. And the argument Plato himself develops starting at 295d must be understood in the same sense: remember the doctor who hasgone on a trip, leaving you a prescription [ordonnanu], and then comesback and wants to change the treatment. Bue stupid you, you respond:"No, no, I've got your orders [/'ordonnanu]." Of course, the doctor hereis the royal man. And if the laws are-as Plato himself says-laid downby the crowd itself with the advice of the wisest men, the crowd, like thedoctor, c,m go back over its decisions; the dimos can collect itself and re-consider rhc question. And given the essential gap between the gram-mata-che dead "letters"-and ever-changing reality-the always differ-ent circumstances, and therefore the need to modify the laws in order totake imo account these changes in reality and the variation in circum-stances-it follows that legislation cannot be something char is madeonce and for all; it's a permanent activity. AJI legislation has to be capableon a permanent basis of collecting itself and going back over things-that's what I call permanent sdf-insricution. And the subjects of this per-161

manent st:lf-institution, the active, acting subjects, have to-if we arc to

stick to the potentialid.cs of the text-be the whole sec of citizens; chis hasto be the dimos itself. You sec rhen that, if these ideas arc taken seriowly--on the one hand,the essential gap between the written law and a diverse and changing rc-alicy; on the ocher hand, the impossibility of any government beingseated constantly at everyone's bedsidc2-chc pocencialicics of the tcxcparadoxically but, I believe, quite rigorously lead, in light of rhe impossi-bilities Plato himself posits, to che idea char ultimately rhc poliuia charcorresponds to the nature of things, to the nature of laws, is a democraticpoliteia, which self-instiruces itself in permanent fashion.

Before passing to the part that concerns the division of regimes, I'd liketo insist upon the fact that it's really with Plato and with chis passage fromthe Statesman that we have the beginning not only of all discussion aboutrhe interpretation of the laws, hermeneutics, but also--and here, it'salong with a passage from the Phaedrus--of a.II discussion concerning ob-jectivation as alienation. There is something that is the living subject, liv-ing logos, living speech, discussion, dialogue; and this is the genuine "lifeof the mind [vie de /'esprit]," to employ an anachronistic expression. Andthen there's the dead deposit of that, which arc lcncrs, the grammata, ar-tifacts, which the spirit [!'esprit] has constituted, in which it has crystal-lized itself, but from which it has withdrawn. And thlS later became oneof the great themes of subsequent philosophy, in Hegel and Marx: T 1cseobjectivations arc thenceforth there as a sort of dead product of a livingsubject; che dead product stands in the way of this living subject Hkc anobstacle to its subsequent realization or to its subsequent life. It's Hegel's"becoming exterior to oneself": the works of the spirit from which hespirit as living spirit has withdrawn. And the point of departure for thisdistinction, for the opposition between the spirit that breathes, that isalive, and dead works, is in this passage from the Statesmar,.

&prise ofth, ucond digmsion on th, form of regimes.

I don't wane co linger very long over chis. There's the beginning of anexposition in 192..1, interrupted by the long digression on the law, theroyal man, and so forth, and then Plato goes back over the subject be- Srminar ofApril 30, 1986

tween 300d and 303b. He begins by dividing poliricaJ regimes according

co the old criteria, already known in Herodotw, of one, several, all. Or,monarchy, oligarchy, democracy. Herc, indeed, is a topoJ extending acrossthe history of political theory and the hiscory of philosophy. The equiva-lencs in logic uc singular, panicular, and universal judgments. And Hegdsaid later on that Asians knew the freedom of a single man, Greeks knewthe freedom of a few, the Germano-Christians knew the freedom of all.Then, after the definition of the statesman in terms of science, and, start-ing from there, the reimrod.uction of the laws, one ends up with a bipar-tition of these three regimes. Plato's text is often jarring, and I don't wantto linger too long over it. Lee's say that we have at this moment " singlecoercer city, the one ruled by the royal man. And for the rhrcc regimes,there are rhe forms that arc rights-based States, States ruled by laws, and there are the forms that are in a state of illegitimacy. That is, if in monar-chy we have someone who governs according to laws, that will give us agenuine kingship; if not, we have a tyranny. When in the regime where asmall number reign, we have a government according to laws, we'll havean aristocracy; if nO(, an oligarchy. Finally, when the crowd governs, cherearc no prccstablishcd names, but here again one can distinguish between the case where the crowd governs without laws and the one where it gov-erns with laws. But Placo refuses to name these two regimes as such. In my opinion, there's not much to say about this discussion~xcepc,here again, to admire Plato's rhetoric and sophistry. For, the way in whichhe describes the Athenian democratic regime in the paragraphs precedingthe third digression is a wholly unacceptable, grotesque caricature. Hepresents it as if ir were a regime that arbitrarily decides upon what is goodor bad in medicine, that designates by the drawing of lots the people whoare to carry out instructions [rlaliur ks prescriptiom] and then asks chemto account for it, and so on. This argument is utterly inadmissible anddishonest, because as a matter of fact at Athens the city does not decideche problems, the questions, the subjects on which there is a technicalknowledge of some son. The city decides upon laws in general or decidesupon governmental acts, but there arc no laws concerning government asactivity. The whole parallel Plato is drawing with the "governance" of aship or with the activity of a doctor is aimed at presenting the Atheniandimo1 as having decided in its stupidity upon what the "governor" of aship is co do and as forcing him to stick to the instrucrions of the dimoJin this regard. Now, that wasn't che case at Athens: the-re were no instruc-tions given concerning government as activity. The activity of the drmosconcerns points that arc absolutely not technical in nature. And Platohimself knows that very wdl, since he al...dy discussed this, among otherthings, in the Prot11goras, as I told you last time. But we don't have to beconcerned any further with these distinctions among types of regime.

VI. Conclusion: On the Composition of the Statesman

I'd like to conclude now with a f~ considerations concerning the over-all scrucrurc of the Stausman-what, from the outset of our reading, Ihave called the "strangc-ness" of rhis structure. What, indeed, is one to think of this very bizarre composition, inwhich Plato sets out to define the statesman and gives several successivedefinitions, only to abandon them along the way, in which there arc nu-merow incidental points that concern very imponant issues and digres-sions that touch upon entirely basic points, like the third digression onthe law, for example? How is one to understand these strange goings-onin the composition of the Suitaman? The question is all the more com-pelling because we know that Plato was eminently capable of writing di-alogues that arc perfectly composed, from the standpoint of dramaticform as well as from the standpoint of the very tight ordering of the ar-gument. Think of the Symposium, a literary as well as philosophical mas-terpiece, but also of the Protagonu, the Plum/nu, the Crito, the Go,gias,the Euthydnnus, and the first book of the &publi,. And there arc dia-logues like the Th,.umus or the Parmmides that ate absolutely perfect,whose plan is crystalline in its hardness and transparency, and in whichthe exposition of doctrine is admirably mastered, with regiments of argu-mentation that march to the assault in totally ordered fashion, folio, inga perfect battle plan. On the other hand, what we have to keep in sight is that Plato-asmuch, indeed, as Aristotle and Thucydidcs--<loesn't worry, when he'swriting prose, about considerations of form and composition the way theModerns do, especially after Rousseau and especially after Kant. Plato,Aristotle, and Thucydides follow their own thought and allow themselvesto go into incidental points and to make digressions. The way we letourselves go when we find ourselves in a fecund moment: we're writing,other thoughts come, and we want at any price to record them, it mat- Smrinar ofApril JO, I986

tcring little whether or not they lie along the central axis of what we areexpounding. And chis is tied up with chc more general problem of form in writtenwork. What was the case in Greece from this standpoint? Of course, onehad a perfect and strict form from the outset in poetry, in epic poetry aswell as in lyric poetry. And obviously in tragedy, coo: no more "forceful"form could be imagined-in the sense that one talks about the force of awork of art-than the form of a tragedy. But things arc different withprose. And this is dear in Hcrodotw, who, as I told you last year {in theseminar!, can't resist the plcaswc of celling a good story, even in the mid-dle of a "serious" bit of narration. A5 for Thucydides, he weaves his storyfrom general rcAcctions, either in the form of pure digressions of his owninvention [dt- son cniJ or in the form of speeches attributed to characterswho participate in the action. But even taking account of that-taking account of the fact that theAncients weren't writing essays for teacher recruitment exams [disserta-tions dagrttation). with the risk that a grader might note "off the subject"in the margin-the composition of the Stausman remains very bizarre.This lS so above all becawe the two definitions at issue-that of theS(atesman as pastor, then as weaver-aren't concerned about what is es-sential co the dialogue. And here, there's the precedent of the Sophi1t,where one starts off by defining a whole series of activities that deal onlyin a secondary way with the Sophist; but in this Sophist, it can be said thatPlato's interest in his subject, rhe Sophist, is relatively secondary, whereasit would be wrong to say the same thing in the case of the State1man.Who could maintain that the politilto1-~ royal man, as political man-or the policica.1-as field--doesn't interest Plato as such?3 We know verywell that he wrote on this topic upon several occasions! Now, there's one way of approaching the State1man that perhaps ren-ders the strangeness of its composition less opaque. And it's chat the con-siderations expressed in the two major digressions aren't secondary butconstitute, rather, the substance of the dialogue. Thw, the first digression, which introduces the myth of Cronus, as Itold you a few weeks ago, has a quite strategic importance, not only in theStausman itself but in Plato's political and philosophical oeuvre. For, it'swith this myth that Plato builds up what could be called his political-philosophicaJ strategic reserves, with the idea of a divine pastor and alsoof a terrestrial world that, abandoned by the god, is doomed to decay and166 On e/ato! Statesman

corruption. Set in the middle of the Suttsman, chis myth of the age ofCronus, and chcrcforc of a present era that is no longer the age of Cronusbut the age of Zeus, gives,, for he who believes in this myth or who wantsco let himself be impressed by it, all the strategic depth-as one talksabout a territory's defensive depth-necessary for the rest of what Plato isadvancing co seem as if it has been defended with sufficicnc force. And likewise it may be thought chat introducing the third digressionwas also one of the dialoguc's objectives. For, it was necessary for Plato tointroduce chis critique: of the law that comes here co intensify, to give res-onance and bring reinforcement to, his whole critique of written speechas opposed to living speech. And it was also necessary for him co ratify inadvance, if I may say so, the rights of a royal man who might suddenlyappear and who would therefore be, due to this very fact, like the doctorwho comes home from a trip and who can tear up the orders he has leftand write another set or say in person and out loud (dt viw voix) what thepatient is or is not to do. It is also in view of this digression that one is co understand che intro-duction of the image-lacer to be abandoned~f the pastor and of theparadigm of the weaver. That paradigm, as I have already said to you, in-troduces other aporias and paradoxes relative to che question of what ul-timately this much talked-about weaver weaves together and from what,what his raw material is. So, finally, it's from this point of vi~ that one must Stt, I believe, thestrange features in the composition of che Statesman. We have here a con-struction chat is baroque, though willed as such, done in a concened way,conscious. For, even if the way the dialogue unfolds isn't subjected atevery moment to strict logical control (by which I mean, formal control),the publication of the dialogue-the face that Plato accepted chis manu-script as his own, without which we wouldn't have it; it wouldn't havebeen handed down to us--is well and truly a conscious, deliberate, re-sponsible act, as one would say today. Therefore, everything happens asif, in leaving this dialogue in the state it is in, Plato had wanted as a mat-ter of fact to furnish a written example of living thought-as if he hadwanted to give w grammata that show how the mind, thought, /ogo5functions when it is left- to itself and when it doesn't worry about prob-lems of formal presentation or outward comprehension. Ir's as if he weresaying co w: Here's how this worlcs when it works; here's how one thinks. The Stausman is a dialogue that can be criticized-I have done so am- Sm,i,wr ofApril 30, 1986

ply during chis discussion-but it mwt also be seen as being, to my

knowledge, one of the closest specimens we possess of the genuine courseof an important thought, of a great thought, of an authentic thoughtwhen it operates without caring about criticisms, examiners, formalists,the grammarians of Alexandria or the French academicians, and so on. Iroperates like that; it unfolds, it goes off on tangents, and then it recoversits balance [st rlcupffl] as it c.an. We may recall the remark of Andr~Gide's about the difference between talent and genius: "When one hassome talent, one does what one wants; when one has some genius, onedoes what one can." And it's uuc chat Placo, in this dialogue, docs whathe can. And he can let himself go off expounding a course of thought justlike that without having co correct it. He makes us see in this way some ofthe most profound aspects of the labor of thought-aspects that we also find again, for example, but in an entirely different fashion, in che Timaew, when, right in the middle, the dialogue is again imerrupced there by the sudden discovery that it has started off on the wrong footand that everything must be started over from the beginning. The same thing happens again in the Tlmutetu.s, with consecutive resumptions, and in the l.Aws, although chis last text raises other questions. Aristotle, too,was in the habit of making these sorts of digressions, which head off in acertain direction that seems important to him at the moment he's writingsomething, bur he did so in a much more moder.a.re way, and never withthe intensity we encounter in the Statesman. I don't want to make superficial and facile parallels, but I'd like you to understand what I mean: here we have something that offers a bit of ananalogy with dreams. There is a sort of latent content in the Statesman,which isn't singular [unique]; it's multiple. And it's no more singular,whatever Freud might sometimes say about it, than it is in a dream. Whatuniqueness [unicit!] chere is in a dream is much more the result of theworlcing out of secondary features [tlaboratiom secondaires], because thelatent content itself tends to go off in all directions-as Freud knew per-fectly well. And that is more or less always the case each time the creativeimagination is truly laboring, even when it's the theoretical imaginationas grasped by us before formal constraints come to impose themselvesupon it in a certain fashion from the outside-when, therefore, thisimagination labors, creates, solely with the aid of formal constraints it hasalready incorporated inro itself, for example, the fact that it can speak,that it is not reduced to mumblings but, rather, articulates something.168 On Plato) Statesman

And I believe that we have here something that is analogous to what

can be: called the latent content that is at the start of all music, which per-haps initially includes o~ly a rhythm and an intensity coupled with an-other latent content that is melodic, all of that being subject from theoutset to a first-order secondary elaboration [un, prmrim llaboration Ste·ond.rir,), that of cxptcSSion; then, next, to a second-order secondary elab-oration, that of genuine fixation, that is to say, of formulation or compo-sition." It is this second-order elaboration that might have been able tocome to "correct" the Suzumuzn: one can imagine Plato or someone dscgoing back over the dialogue in order to give it that formal outward co-herence it doesn't have at present. Bur that wasn't done. As such, ncvcr-thdcss, l 'll say that reading the Statrsmdn-and it is for this reason, too,that I have been lingering over it-is a bit like listening to Chopin im-provise one of his Noauma, one of his &U4dn, before having written itdown. Contrary to some wrongly widespread ideas, the works of Chopinarc written out ro a great extent; they aren't pure improvisations. He wentback over them, constructed a very rigorow, very large architecture. Butwe also know that he was a great improviser. And it's that difference thatI am trying to mark; and it's that difference the S111umutn gives us. I am going to stop on this point, on this theme of the authentic pres-entation of works of thought, and invite you, too, to discuss all these the-oretical contents that we have seen deployed through it and that will jus-cify, in your view as well as mine, the ~t that we have devoted all d cseseminars to this dialogue. Ir has, at the same time, allowed us to sec an ex-ample of whac is called-more or less abwivcly-"reading" a philosoph-ical work. But I mean really reading it, by respecting it yet without re-specting it, by going into the rcccsscs and details without having decidedin advance chat everything it contains is coherent, homogeneous, makessense, and is crue.

You cite {the Socialist politician) Michel Rocard and the mystery of hispopularity. But I myself have alluded to cases that arc, if I may say so,much more worthy of hanging: Hitler, Mussolini, or whoever you want.What's going on? Suddenly, someone appears who embodies the answccto all problems. Perhaps he doesn't embody it for the majority of the pop- Snninar ofApril 30, 1986

ulacion, but for a enough of a segment for him to be imposed by violent

means upon the others. This is the way, moreover, chat Aristoclc, alwaysvery pragmatic, ana.lyzed the appearance of tyrants. The cities were in amoment of crisis, of decomposition of the: dominant oligarchy--of stasis,of a ha.le to the normal functioning of the city. And the person who knewhow to scdua the people imposed himself. Pisistratw at Athens, for ex-ample. But there arc plenty of examples elsewhere. One can also chink ofBonapanc for chc France of 1798-1800. He knewhow co do it: from Egypt, he organized his propaganda machine in orderto ma.kc the French believe that he was this exceptional man, chis greatgeneral capable of bringing France out of the situation in which it founditself. So, this is a recurrent figure in hiscory, and Weber has himself insisted upon his charismatic, religiow aspect. Take Mohammed. One can then value or not value this or that personage, consider him a monster or a sav- ior, but the phenomenon exists. Likewise, there really exists a tendency, a predisposition of populations, to hope for a providential man who will re- lieve us of our responsibilities as citizens. Moreover, you're talking co me about the role of the media, which, in the modern world, are, you say, insidiously imposing their choices. For my pan, I would much more willingly tie the epistimi of the Platonic royal man co certain modern pretensions to knowledge about society and history. I am thinking obviously of Marxist-Leninist parties: it isn't just by chance chat Stalin got himself awarded the ride of"coryphaeus of sci-ence" by his toadies. Bue one can just as well mention our alleged experts,whether or not they've been co a cop public-management school like the~le Nacionale d'Administradon [(narques ou pa.r]. Why do chose peo-ple govern us? Because they "know." What do they know? Most of thetime, nothing at all. As for the media, and to remain within the Platonic vocabulary, Iwould file chem under the heading: presentation of the simulacrum. Theimage instead of che truth. This is now something well established. I my-self argued all chat as early as 1959, in a text on modern capitalism:~ apre.sident of che Republic is sold co che population as one sells a tube oftoothpaste. And it's truer than ever now in 1986. {Take the advertisingman} Jacques SCguCla, with !his slogan for the 1981 presidential electioncampaign of} Fran~ois Minerrand, "the tranquil force." Le Montie offer-ing serious commentary on the {TV political news-show appearances} of170 On Plato's Slatesman

Jacques Chirac and Laurent Fabius. 6 This is really the manipulation of

images and nothing else. It's what comrade Guy Debord gallicizcd andplagiarized when talking 1about the "society of the spectacle."~ And tocome back co Rocard, 8 I believe that his popularity daces back to electionnight 1978. For the first rime, French ccl~ision viewers saw a politicianwho didn't say, "We lost bU[ we won anyway," or else, "We lost becawethe ochers cheated," or "because it was raining," or something else likechat. No, Rocard said: We lost, and it's our fault, and we have only our-selves to blame if we screwed up. Thar was unhurd of! It was so strong, this against-the-current use of rhe media, chat it won him the hatred of the Socialist Party and the Communist Parry, and chat was enough to keep him ahead in the polls for eight years. And Reagan! His political maxim isn't, "Is it good or nor?" but, rather, "ls it news or not?" le happens that I was in New York at the moment of che attack on Libya. And the thing had been prepared like a live television program. The attack took place in such a way that it was going to mo- nopolize the evening news. All the nerworks talked about nothing but chat. A half hour later, Larry Speaks, the White House spokesman, came on. And at nine o'clock, the culmination: Reagan addressed the Ameri- can nation. "From now on, the world will know that you can't walk over us." And the polls, ro top it all off: Did you like it? Five to one, the Amer- icans approved of the accack. Or liked the program; it's abouc the same thing. Thar said, I shall never let contemporary society off the hook by saying that it's gening raped by the media. It's getting raped because it really wanes to get raped. The same ching goes for French readers who let them- selves be abused and scupi6ed by the "new philosophers."? They have the authors they deserve. From chis standpoint, the role of the media isn't de- cisive: if there's manipulation, chat's because there's "manipulability."

2. On the equivalence, the idmtity. between, on the one hand, the gap uparating the laws from daily rra/ity and, on the oth,r, the difjicul, par- ticipation ofthings in the Itkm--as the Parmenidcs trran this Wue, for exampk.

Quice right. And Plato's great merit is to have raised this problem asearly as the Pamunides. Without giving an answer, I might add. And laterchis was Aristotle's principal war-horse against Plato. What is the rcla- Smiinar ofApril JO, 1986 171

tionship between the singular anthl'Opor and the Idea of anthrOpot? Platosays: h participates in the Idea. And Aristotle replies: But what does thatmean, participatt? Ir's a metaphor. Whence che "third man" argument. And this problem of the singular being [/'lt4nt singulier] and the uni-versal is still with w. The nominalist solution doesn't hold up for long.One can, of courn:, decide by convention to call "dogs" all mammals chathave such and such characteristics. But it happens, as Aristode alreadysaid, that a dog and a bitch make puppies, not pelicans. Now chat doesn'tdepend upon the conventions of language. Therefore, there is somethinglike a "canicude." What the biologists say about it is char it's in che genes,and in any case it goes beyond {depmse] the conventions of language. And the problem of singular/universal relationships hasn't made anyheadway toward a solution. I believe that in the abstract not much morecan be said. I'd like to add only that this relationship between the in-stances of a concept and the concept differs according to the regions ofbeing (ks rlgiom dr /'im] under consideration. This is to say that the re-lationship of a dog with the notion of dog is not the same as the relation-ship of the entity "twentieth-century French society" or "fifteenth-century Florentine society" with the notion of society. Each time, the domain ofbeing in which we find ourselves must be explored, as well as the relation that, within this domain of being, unites the universal to the singular. Moreover, in the Statesman, this Platonic preoccupation with partici-pation is coupled with another question I have already insisted upon agreat deal: the distance between the dead letter and the living spirit. Thatis also one of rhe themes of the Phaedrus: the superiority of living dia-logue over the written, which fixes thought in place and forbids dialogue.Translator's Afterword

"Grear minds rhink alike"-or so rhe saying goes. Often this adage issaid in jest or to compliment both speaker and interlocutor who havefallen into agreement. Behind humor or mutual flattery, however, lies theidea that if a mind is grC11.t, it would (could, should) think the same thingas another great mind. As Pierre Vidal-Naqucr points out in his Foreword,another Plato commentator, Leo Strauss, "followed the text quireclosely-to the point of modeling himself upon it"; in chat case, he ex-plains, "the result is a constant jwcification of the most minor derails ofthe argument." And this, despite the fact char Strauss, one of the principalproponents of chc "great books" school of lcarning-"Libcral educationconsists in listening to the conversation 1.mong the greatest minds"-confesscd that these "great minds" often disagree with one another, thusplacing us poor Moderns in a situation of"overwhdming difficulty." 1 Animpossible nostalgia for a consensual "meeting of the [great] minds" chat,despite cheir "conversation," never occurred would therefore seem co ruleStrauss's mind and co direct him coward mimetic "modeling," as well as"constant justification." One would be hard pressed co find a more adamant-and fecund-refucacion of chc view chat "great minds think alike" than the dissidentwritings and speeches of Cornelius Castoriadis. Ca.scoriadis regarded Platoas by far the "greatest philosopher who ever existed" (CR, p. 372). But ashe already said in 1981, "to honor a thinker is not to praise, or even co in-terpret, but co discuss his work, thereby keeping it alive and demonstrat-ing that it defies time and retains rdcvance." 1 Speaking earlier, in 1974, ofMarx's as "a great work," Castoriadis called not only for discussion but

m174 Translz:,1r's Afterword

deep inrerrogations: "It is ambiguous. le is a1so contradictory: there are

different strata. An immense labor is required ro begin to make some-thing out of it-that is to say, to find chertin especially some questions"(CR, p. 2j). Later, when taking a more general view in his 1989 "critical/political reflection upon our history," he related that view back ro relevantreading of great philosophy:

To rcAect upon historical era.s and processes critically ... is co strive to find therein some germs of importance to us, as wdl as also limits and failures which, to begin with, put a hair to our thinking since they had served within realiry itself as actual stopping blocks. (This is also the way one reads---or, rather, the way one ought to read-a great philosophical text, if one wants to make something of it for oneself) It is certainly not to look in them for mod- els, or for foils. Nor is ic to look in chem for le~ons. (WIF, p. 73)

A great work of philosophy can, moreover, be greatly mistaken, Kant's as-

sertion chat he "could furnish the 'conditions of possibilicy for experience'by looking uniquely at the 'subject'" being "one of the most astonishingabsurdities ever registered in the history of great thought" ( WIF, p. 345}. Yet we are not offhandedly to dismiss a great thinker for his great mis-takes any more than we should simply learn "lessons" therefrom. Casto-riadis intensely reflected upon the reception of great works-which, heinforms us, "is never and can never be a matter of mere passive accept-ance; it is always also, re-creation" (CR, p. 346). Indeed, these works inviteus to chink through their immense absurdities, flagrant errors, and baldcontradictions so char we may think further ourselves, just as chcsethinkers have done-although without always knowing or acknowledg-ing it. le is worthwhile quoting him at length on this matter to see howhe conceives chis process of reception (IIS, p. 174):

Jc is not chesc conceptions, as such, rhat truly macter, nor their critique, and even less chc critique of their authors. With important authors, conceptions are never pure; the application of such conceptions in contact with the mate- riaJ these authors arc attempting to chink reveals something other than what they explicitly think, and the resulu are infinitely richer than their program- matic theses. A great author, by definition, thinks beyond his means. He is great co the o:tent chat he thinks something ocher than whar has already been thought, and his means arc the result of what has already been thought, which continually encroaches on what he docs think, if only because he can- not wipe away aJI that he has received and place himself before a cabula rasa, Tram/4,ors Aft,rword

evc=n when he is under the iUusion that he can. The contradictions dm arc al- wa~ present in a great author bear witness to this fact; I am speaking of true, raw, irreducible contradictions, which it is just as stupid to think cancel by thcmselv~ the author's contribution as it is useless to try to dissolve or to re- cuperate at successive and ever deeper levels of interpretation.

Those familiar with Castoriadis's thought know his thesis that, just aspolitics challenges instituted ways of being and doing in society, "thetruth of philosophy is the rupture of closure, the shaking of received selfevident truths, including and especially philosophical ones" (CR, p. 371).Its characteristically radical creativity is that "it is chis movement, bur it isa movement thac creates the soil upon which it walks." In being determi-n2tive rather than determined in 2dvance--cven in the case of"the wholeofGrcco-WeS(ern philosophy," whose soil .. is the soil of tkterminacy"-such creuion muS( alw2ys also determine itself as something particular:"This soil is not 2nd cannot be just anything-it defines, delimits, forms,and constrains." Thus,

the defining characteristic of a great philosophy is what allows it co go beyond

its own soil-what incites it, even, to go beyond. As it tends to-and has to-cake responsibility for the totality of the thinkable, it tends to close upon itself. If it is great, one will find in it at least some signs chat the movement of thought cannot stop there and even some pan of the means co continue chis movement. Both these signs and these means cake the form of aporias, antin- omics, frank contradictions, heterogeneous chunks. (ibid.)

The present seminars offer us an exemplary instance of this pragmatic,

pertinent, and discriminating approach to thinking and reading throughgreat works. Castoriadis himself concludes his seminar of April 30, 1986:"I mean really reading it, by respecting it yet without respecting it, by go-ing into the recesses and details without having decided in advance chateverything it contains is coherent, homogeneous, makes sense, and iscrue." His respected and disrespected adversary here is Plato, the greatphilosophical opponent of Athenian democracy-which, Plato himselfclaimed, "can never do anything great" (Statesman 303a). Castoriadis, weknow, saw the capacity for human greatness not only in isolated individ-uals but especially in collective democratic endeavors that may fosterrather ch.an stifle creativity. 1 TramUl1:Jri Afterword

man, situating it historically in a key position between the Republic andthe law!. But what is co be said of this series of transcribed seminars?While not aberrant in structure, they are indeed curious. Like the States-man's many digressions and incidental points, they do have their excur-suses (e.g., on Chomsky and Chopin). And like the Stamman, they hoverbetween the written and the spoken-but not, as Castoriad.is says of thatdialogue, in the same deliberate, si'grud way. To form an idea of where, within Castoriadis's overall oeuvre, to situatethese transcribed talks, let us start with his own humorous response chathe didn't know that he had written a new book. Not only that, but Cas-toriadis never wrote a book all the way through. The eight-volume l:.di- tions rnh8 series (excerpted translations in PSW1-3 and CR) reprinted ar- ticles from his revolutionary journal, Socia/isme ou Barbarie (S. ou B.),along with new introductory pieces. The six-volume Ca"efours du l.abyrinthe series (excerpted translations so far in CL, PPA, CR. and WIF) reprinted separate articles and interviews, as well as including previously unpublished material. Even what we call his magnum opw, The Imagi- nary Institution of Society, isn't a conventional book but four chapters added on to a five-part S. ou B. series. With the exception of one other transcription-his 1980 De i'lcologie a J'autonomie public talk along with Daniel Cohn-Bendit, which now appears in CR-these seminars in fact constitute the first book-length Castoriadis volume published at one time on a single theme. (The first part of his pseudonymous contribution to Mai 68: La b,,ch,, coauthored with Claude I..efon and Edgar Morin and now in PSW3 with a twenty-year retrospective in WIF, was first distrib- uted to protestors as a mimeographed pamphlec during "the events" themselves; Devant Lt gunn, his 1981 analysis of Russia as a "stratocracy," began as a 1980 magazine article.) Castoriadis thus was an ever-engaged and evolving writer and speaker,"striving co find some germs of importance to us," rather than an authorof weighty or slight comes on, say, madness and civilization, capitalismand schizophrenia, or, perhaps, postcards. His speeches became moder-ate-length published essays, his essays became public calks and interviC"Ws,worked and reworked throughout his life. A good example is the se-quence starting our as a r965 lecture for British comrades printed as a London Solidarity pamphlet, "The Crisis of Modern Society" (PSW3), re3.ppearing as an updated 1979 French-Canadian journal article, "Social T,..,1,,,,,,; Afterword 177

Transformation and Cultural Creation" (PSW3), and adapted for a 1987

Amcric.an audience as "The Crisis of Culture and the State" (PPA). 4 Castoriadis also wrote in 1979 "Socialism and Autonomous Society"(SAS in PSW3), an introductory essay to the 10'18 volume on the contentof socialism in which he formally abandoned the much-abused term so-cialim, in favor of the autonomous socitty. Similarities to On Pl.ato's uStaw-m.an" establish that SAS is indeed a precursor text for the Plato seminars. First, Castoriadis's only substantial prior discussion of the Statesmanappeared in SAS.~ There, Castoriadis examined Plato's idea of chc law act-ing as an "arrogant and ignorant man" and stressed that a power "un-bound by law ... cannot purely and simply be dismissed our of hand," for chis "discussion of law in the StausmAn cannot be underestimated ei- ther in its profundity or as to its relevance: today" (SAS, p. 329). As in the March 26 seminar, he arcackcd communise dictatorship, linking Marx back co Plato while affirming the necessity of rules and institutions (ibid., pp. 328--30). There is, however, not only the rule but a distance from the rule, an "ineffaceable gap which opens [society] to its proper question, the question of justice" (ibid., p. 329), an "essential gap between the rule and the concrete case (which] isn't absolute" (April 23). Ac the end of the last seminar, he drags out, against its manifest intention, the "consequence of the Platonic text": "it's the permanent democratic self-institution of soci- ety," jwt as, in SAS, he draws therefrom his conclusion about "a soci- ety ... constantly in the movement of explicit self-insticucion" (SAS, p. 329). We can, in this way, even supply one lase unarcribuced reference: it was Edward Bdlamy (ibid., p. 317; Ca.s1oriadis adding, "[ 1hink") who gave the Platonic "critique of the law ... a socialist form: The law, for ex- ample, just as strictly forbids rich people from sleeping under bridges as it docs poor prople" (March 26). 6 We nevertheless muse trace these roots even deeper. The key texts in the volume SAS introduced were the first two parts of "On the Contentof Socialism" (CS/and CS!!, now in PSW1and 2). Following preliminaryremarks, Ca.storiadis deliberately began his classic 1957 text on council-based workers' management with a "positive definition of socialism":.. The very content of our ideas leads us to maintain that, ulcimacdy, onecannot understand anything about che profound meaning of capitalismand the crisis it is undergoing unless one begins with the most (Otal ideaof socialism" (CS/I, p. 92). Similarly, after opening remarks on the States-man, he explains: "I offer here and now these anticipations ... because, Translat::r's Afterword

if we don't have in sight this central kernel of the dialogue-the positions

developed there and the problematic to which they give birth-we can-not understand the genuine nakes that arc there during the discussion ofthe two [statesman] definitions" (February 26). These seminar "anticipa-tions" concern "self-government at all echelons" as well as "a radical andentirely jwtified condemnation of every utopia" (CS// being based uponprojections from actual experiences of the workers' movement and alsoresolutely opposed to "a backward-looking type of utopian thinking"[p. IOI]). 7

Now, there is a tendency to contrast an early, "political" or "revolu-

tionary" Cascoriadis to a later one, described variowly as "intellectual,""academic," a "philosopher," and so on-as if these two sets of termsmust always be mutually and totally exclwive. 8 To see that such a di-chocomow temporal division ofCastoriadis's oeuvre doesn't hold, let's ex-amine how a number of apparent anomalies in On Plato's ..Statesman" canbe illuminated by reading these seminars in light of whac I caU its precur-sor texts. First, a minor point concerning an error in DiCS's translation chat stoicinto the transcribed text. Here is the restored passage for Statesman 292c,one of Young Socrates' most significant responses to the Stranger fromElea, the former uttering more than his usual few words of agreement yecstill reinforcing the lance's idea of the scacesman as single "royal man":

~TRANGER: But in a ciry of a thousand citiz..ens, would it be possible that a

hundred or even fifty citizens might possess this [politic.al] science? YOUNG SOCRATES: By this count, statesmanship would be the easiest of all the arts. Out of a thousand citizens, it would already be quire difficult to find fifty or a hundred who knew how to play checkers wdl. So, for this an that is the most difficult of all, if there were one citiz.en co possc.,;s it, rhar would already be miraculow!

Intriguingly, Casroriadis, who knew the difference ~tween the correct "athousand" (chilioi) and DiCS's incorrect "ten thousand" (murias) perfectlywell and nored the mistake in his copy, may also have had chis specificpassage in mind back in 1957 when he spoke about the deep-seared irra-rionaliry, contradictions, wastefulness, and perpetual conflict of"chc cap-italise organization of society [which] denies people's capacity for sclf-or-gani7.ation": "If a thousand individuals have among them a given capacity Translators Afterword 179

for self-organization, capitalism consists in more or less arbicrarily choos-

ing fifty of these individuals, vesting them with managerial authority anddeciding that the others should just be cogs" (p. 93). Not only ..a thou-sand" but "fifty" appears in both passagcs! 9 Is this numerical comparison between StausmAn 292.c and CSI/ far-fccchcd? Castoriadis had already alluded rwo years earlier co the States-man's likening of the law ro "an ignorant and crude man," concludingthat "a socialise solution can only be socialist if it is a concrete solutionthat involves the permanent participation of the organized unit of work-ers in determining this solution" ( CS/, p. 300). He was thus already work-ing through the Staumuzn, its ambiguous critique of law, and its deter-mined denial of the self-organiz.acional capacities of (finite, specific) people when he composc:d his landmark mid-195os texts on the contentof socialism. 10 The idea that Castoriadis was once an engaged political ac-tivist who later became an academic philosopher enthralled by Greecetherefore cannot withstand swtaincd scrutiny of continuicies and devel-opments in his thought. Were one nevertheless disposed to contrast an early, "councilist" Cas- toriadis ro a later "academic philosopher" merely commencing on Plato, many of these seminars' intricacies would defy comprehension. When,for example, Castoriad.is states (April 30) that Plato prcsencs the Atheniandemocncy "as if it were a regime that arbitrarily decides upon what isgood or bad in medicine," one might surmise that he is also abandoningthe absolutist "all power to the councils" position one imagines he for-merly championed. In face, an advocacy of the "dictatorship of the prole-tariat," already atcenuatc:d in CS/I, was mercilessly criticized in SAS (p.326): "the present-day partisans of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat'should have rhe courage to explain char they are, in principle, for the abo-lition of the political rights of farmers, craftsman, massage therapistsworking at home, and so on; also, chat the publication of medical, liter-ary, and ocher such journals should depend on ad hoc authorizationsgranted by 'the workers."' CSII argued that a radical system of councilsrequires not only extensive decencralizacion but also central decision-making-a thoughtful, sober position, upsetting to many anarchists andliberals. His central socialist goal, however, was to foster a set of institu-tions that would allow for a u/fintegraud articula.tion of participatorydemocratic rule ar all levels under modern conditions (CSI!, p. 99), notaggregation around che center or disaggregation at the "margins." (le is,rather, in a totalitarian society rhat, for example, scientific issucs-e.g.,180 Tramlatcr\ Afterword

Lyscnkoism-are transformed systematically into objects of governmen-

tal decree.) Castoriadi,'s insistence in these seminars upon the relative au-tonomy of workers in various technical fields is thus consonant with ear-lier remarks and in fact atends and refines chem. In this last seminar, Castoriadis judges Plato's argument "utterly inad-missible and dishonest, because as a maner of fact at Athens rhc city docsnot decide the problems, the questions, the subjects on which there is atechnical knowledge of some son." Again, some may be tempted to thinkchat a now mcUowed Castoriadis is attempting to remove certain issuesfrom the purview of dirc~cr-democratic organs, whereas before he would have favored such solutions. But the relevant issue here refers directly back to CS/I's distinction between technique and technology: technology is the societal choicc---among "a 'spectrum' of techniques available at agiven point in time"---of"a given group (or 'band') of processes," for ex-ample, o.pitalist technology's selection of techniques that seek to acl~ workers from the management of their own work so a5 to "fit in with cap- italism's basic need to deal with labor power a5 a measurable, supervisable, and inrerchangcablc commodity" (p. 104). Not jwt the use but the choice and orientation of a rcchnology is a political question of the first magni- tude, whereas technical questions are not to be seeded in "democratic- ccntra.list" fashion (though demarcations between "the politic.al" and "the technical" themselves remain ever-open political questions). The whole discussion of Greek techni in these seminars and elsewhere must be read in light of CS/I's key distinction. Castoriadis explains chat "the city decides upon laws in general or de- cides upon governmental acts," adding, "but there arc no laws concern- ing government as activity ... there were no instructions given concern- ing government as activity. The activity of the dimos concerns points thatarc absolutely not technical in nature" (April 30). This panicular expla- nation might appear merely empiric.al a nostalgic appeal to the practicesof his beloved Athens, as if he had become enamored of ancient Greeceat the expense of the practices of workers' management. But in fact he had already brought out the same point when generalizing from the 1956 Hungarian ~olucion's creation of councils, n,m within governmmtal tk-partmrots, as a way for workers' to manage their own affairs democrati-cally (CS/I, p. 151). During the prcviow seminar, Castoriadis mocked one French military-induscrial-complex leader's caricature of self-management (aurog~stion), Translator) Aft,rword

paraphrasing him thus: .. They want the hospital's cleaning ladies to oper-ate on us! And ir's these general assemblies of surgeons, nurses, thecashier, the social worker, and the women who wash the Aoors that willdecide by vote whether the patient has an appendicitis rather than bron-chitis!" Bue docs chis mean chat Canoriadis was abandoning the idea ofsovereign decision-making councils and general assemblies? Certainlynor. The same year, he praised the May '68 student-worker rcbdlion inFrance for its "sit-ins and teach-ins of all sores, in which professors andstudents, schoolteachers and pupils, and doctors, nurses and hospitalstaff, workers, engineers, foremen, business and administrative staff spentwhole days and nights discussing their work, their mutual relations, rhcpossibility of transforming the organization and the aims of chcir firms"(WJF, p. 48). Again, CS/J's distinction between technica.l and politicalmatters and its idea of an articulated sec of institutions capable of self-governance (and thus self-limitation) at all In-els are of prime importancefor underscanding the direction of his thought and the tenor of his voice. In the aftermath of May '68 (whose premises he and his revolutionarygroup were so instrumental in preparing) and with the generalization andpopularization of S. ou B. 's theses and ideas on workers' management, au-togestion became a slogan on the French Left. 11 To the extent that this slo-gan entailed mirigations of those theses and ideas, he expressed reticence: The domination of a particular group over society could not be abolished without abolishing the domination of particular groups over the production and work process .... (T]he only conceivable mode of organization for pro- duction and work is coll«tiw man4gnnm1 by all those who participate, as I have not ceased to argue since 1947. Lacer on, this was called "self-manage- ment" -wuaHy in order to make of it a reformist cosmetic for the existing state of affairs or a "testing ground" while carefully remaining quiet about {its] colos.sal implications, upmeam and downstream. (SAS, p. 32.0)

Thw when he spoke (April 23) about what chelate Marcel Dassault wouldhave said fifteen years earlier about autog<1tion, he not only wasn't aban-doning prindples and practices behind autogestion bur defending chem,rather, againsc their post-'68 reformist watering-down, as well as againstthe conservative caricatures formulated in reaction to such bastardizations. One irony is worth mentioning here. In CSII, Castoriadis still spokeambiguowly about representative dnnocracy. Citing advances in the "tech~nique of communication" well before the advent of the Internet, he 7iaml.nt,,ri Afterword

ridiculed the claim "that the very size of modern societies precludes chcexercise of any genuine democracy. Distances and numbers allegedly ren-der direct democracy impossible. The only feasible democracy, it isclaimed, is rcprcsencaci-vc democracy, which 'inevitably' concains a kernelof political alienation, namely, chc separation of representatives fromchose chey rcprcscm" ( CS II, p. 144.). This argument is quite familiar toreaders of the "later" Castoriad.is. Yer he also allowed in 1957 that "therearc several ways of envisaging and achieving representative democracy. Alcgislacurc is one form. Councils arc another, and it is difficult to sec howpolitical alienation could arise in a council system operating according toits own rules. If modern techniques of communication were put in theservice of democracy, the areas where representative democracy would re-main necessary would narrow considerably" (ibid.). Clearly, the relevantissue here is not labels but the existence or nonexistence of "politicalalienation." Later in life, however, Castoriadis condemned "representativedemocracy" evm more ckarly. radically, and adamantly, stressing its "op-position" ( WIF, p. 75) to direct democracy-an opposition he terms "im-mediate and obvious" (ibid., p. 89)-whilc championing the latter (andallowing for delegation by lot, rotation, or revocable election, not "repre-sentation," in cases where on-the-spot participation isn't feasible). Upon dose examination of precursor texts, we see how these Platoseminars conrinue to explore the "colossal implications" of popular man-agement of the economy and of society as a whole-what Casroriadis(CR, p. 30) came to call "no longer simply collective management ('self-managemcnt') bur the permanent and explicit ulfinstitution ofsociety. thatis to say, a state in which the collectivity knows that its institutions arc itsown creation and has become capable of regarding them a.s such, of cak-ing them up again and transforming chem." Each Wednesday from 11A.M. to I P.M. during the French academic year, Casroriadis's seminarbrought together an impressive number of people-50 to 100---ac thetcole des Hautes tcudes en Sciences Sociales. 11 Participants included notonly students, whose studies he conscientiously directed, but also a widevariety of persons of all ages: academics and anarchists, ex-Trocskyiscs andformer members ofS. ou B., a.swell as many others interested in his workand the topics he was discussing. Thus, as subsequent planned volumeswill also show, the seminars allowed him to try our his evolving ideas ona large, diverse, critical, and arccntive audience. 13

• Tramlaror; Aftmuord 183

Audiotapings as well as transcribings of seminars by Casroriadis and

other participants commenced early on. Transcriptions began to circulateinformally. Starting in 1991, Agora Incernarional, a group dedicated tofostering the project of autonomy as elucidated by Castoriadis, madephotocopied transcriptions available to all at cost. 1~ Castoriadis's onlyproviso was that circulation of unpublished work remain limited to in-terested panics and nor itself become a form of publia.rion: he had al-ready seen his ideas plagiarized and debased too many rimcs, 11 he said,and he didn't want unfinished work turned inro someone else's fashion-able book." In previous presentations, I've experimented with the form of thetranslator's foreword. In light of Casroriadis's praise for Thucydides',Placo's, and Aristotle's tendency co follow their own thought wherever itleads them, it certainly would be tempting to emulate here that particu-lar aspect of the cext through extended improvisation, riffing on the sem- inars' motifs. Uc me instead simply express my satisfaction at seeing inprint Castoriadis's own thoughts on improvisation, "jam sessions,"Chopin as a "great improviser," and so on, in relation co the Statesman, its errant structure, and its "turbulences," which land us "smack dab inthe chaos." From my very first translator's foreword (PSW1), I have been underscoring this jazz theme of improvisatory creation as a basic featureof Cascoriadis's elucidation of the project of autonomy. 17 le is with regard to Barthcs and structuralism that Castoriadis decriedan "inability to see that the social being of man implies at once a rule anda distance from the rule" (April 23). Similarly, in response to a questioner,he responded the following week chat "Plato doesn't see the problem ofthe institution-and neither does Derrida, indeed, in Speech and Phe-nomena. He doesn't see the relationship of the play between subjectivityand its works." It is neither chat all language is "fascist" (Barthcs utilizingprecisely language to make this dubious claim) nor chat we are ensnaredin logo-, phono-, or whatever-centrism. Our inherited philosophy-withits tendency, even among those who make the most conspicuou.s denunci-ations thereof. to maintain subject-object dualisms-has yet to assimilateCascoriad.is's original contribution concerning the imaginary institution ofsociety, as well as its political, social, philosophical, psychoanalytical, andocher implications. The project of autonomy isn't an exclusive autono-mization of the written or an alleged absoluteness of the oral but the ca-pacity co adopt another rtla.tion to our works, and to ourselves. One's ca- Jranslatori A{tnword

paciry for improvisation-like that of societies fost~rin~ s~ _c~rivirr-

is no more cxclusivdy 1subjcctivc than it is fully obJ«t1vc; It IS h1Stoncal,always tentative, and ever to be rcn~. There is in the end perhaps something apt as well as evocative in theunfinished nature of Casroriadis's oeuvre. Casroriadis envisioned twOgreat multivolume works, L'Ellmmt i1114ginair, (The lmagina,y Element)and L,, Crluion hum11int (Human Creation). A, a series of 1986 notes ex-plained (WIF, pp. 113,416 n. 4,418 n. 6), l'Ellmmt imaginair,was to bea wrincn work on the imagination. The same year (ibid., p. 413 n. 1) hespoke about La Criation humain~, which was ro be based upon his semi-nars. As it turns out, even this separation between the written and re-worked oral prc.enrarions couldn't be maintained. He eventually foldedboth tomes into one huge Human Creation project. It wa.s never pub-lished. The p=ent seminars form the fint published part of that unfin-ished work. Ultimately, it's up to w to continue this unfinished project of auton-omy and to find ·some germs of importance to us,• speaking, writing,reading, and acting today with our fellow human beings on and aroundthis planer. The possibility of human greatness is not to be tC5erved for afew but is open to all engaged in dialogue with great works who dare tothink differently, more deeply, further than what has been thought so far,as Castoriadis did in relation to Plato--and as we may in turn do in rela-tion ro him by relevantly discussing his work. Not to "discover," beneathsome "'new" interpretation, the merits of representative democracy, to besure, nor by blithely oppo,,ing "earlier" and "later" Castoriadisc.. Morethan ever, we arc "incited to go beyond" what his unfinished work and hisrimes were able to think; to think through, in this n~ millennium henever reached, the issues he raised and the ideas he formulated; to broacha "re-creative" reception of his work; to foster the grcamcss of the demo-cratic project of individual and collective autonomy he helped advance.Merely assenting ro his propositions would make him monummt11l, notgreat. It is in unearthing and sifting through Castoriadis's -aporias, antin-omies, frank contradicrions, heterogeneous chunks• as well as in smash-ing "actual stopping blocks within reality itself' that we can lay downnew foundations upon soil we shall create, raise new edifices thereupon,and, perhaps, discover in him one of the great thinkcn of the past tw0and a half millennia. 11Reference Matter Notes

N.B.: The abbrniations of tides of books by Cornelius Cascoriadis used in che

Introduction: "living Thought llt Wl>rk, "by Pasc11/ Vm111y

1. The 6m volume of O,rrefoun du l..byrintht appcated as Cl. Selectionsfrom volumes 4 and 5, mentioned here, appeared in WIF and CR. Additionalccxu from these two French volumes, as well as the enrircry of rhe sixth, posthu-mow volume in this series, Figum du ~"14b~: ln (•rrefo•rs d. J.l,yri,,,M VT(Paris: Scuil, 1999), are forthcoming in Stanford Univcniry Press volumes trans-lated and edited by me. Prior Ulrrtfo,m tcns--sclecrions from the second andthird volumes-were previously uanslatcd as PPA.-Trans. 2. With the valuable aid ofStlphanc Barbcry, Olivier Fressard, and Nikos 11-iopoulos in 1991, and then of Myno Gondicas in 1998. 3. See now ·The Greek and the Modern Political Imaginary• (1991), WIF,pp. 84-107.-Trans.

On the Tran.rl..tion 1. For an overview of the problems I've encountered and the solutions I"ve of-fered when uanslaring the work of Cornelius Casroriadis, I refer the reader ro"On thcTransla1ion" in WIF. Sec also rhc gloaarics found in PSWr, app. B, andPSWJ, app. G. 2. These include: Hcrodotw (Fcbnwy 19 scminat); the "much talked-aboutstory of rhe lice in the P•munidn, • Demosthenes exhorting Athenians, andAdam Smith speaking "of our poets" (Fcbnwy 26); Arutodc on nous and Nict-z.schc', phrase "The desert is growing" ( Much 5); Aristotle criticizing Plato for NokJ

"wing poetic metaphors" (March 12; cf. March 5); "Mannheim" on Plato's "re-actionary utopia," which I take to be an allwion to Karl Mannheim's Itkologyand Utopia (April 23); Plato "wuing ironic in t:he Phikbw," a.swell as AndreGide talking about the difference between talent and geniw and Aristotle say-ing that a dog and a bitch make puppies, not pclicaru (April 30). 3. Paul Berman, "Wa..iting for the Barbarians," New Rrpublic, December 21,1998, p. 38. -4. Castoriadis explains his invention of comitant in "Discovery" ( WIF, p.216), referring the reader to /IS, p. 328 and p. 395, n. 22, and CL, pp. 322-24. Forhis explanation in the present volume, sec the two parenthetical paragraphs im-mediately following its first appearance (February 19). 5. In '"lime and Crcation'"s English original (WIF, p. 391), Castoriadis refersin passing to "Plato's Politicw (a tide wrongly rendered in the standard Englishwage a.s 'Statesman')." 6. Sec my discussion ofCastoriadis and Lcfort's wages of /di.a politiqur inthe Translator's Foreword to Claude Lcfort's Writing: The Political Hu, trans.David Ames Curtis (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000), pp. x-xi.

Sm,;,.,,, ofFebruary 19, 1986

J. The Athenians took away his command of the military expedition againstSicily.-Pasca.1 Vcrnay (P.V.) 2. M. I. Finley, Ancient Sicily (1968; rev. ed., London: Chauo & Windus,1979), p. 92. From memory, Castoriadis says: "minoritl! enrhCe des scholars."Only "dogged minority" (minoritl ob1tinlr, in the French translation) and not"scholars" appears in Finley. But Finley had contrasted ·most modern histori-ans'" who "accept this saga" about Plato's three Sicilian voyages to "a dogged mi-nority" that "continues to insist on the discrepancies and improbabilities, con-cluding that the saga is largely, perhaps wholly, fictitious (apart from the early,private vi.sit by Plato in J87)" (ibid., pp. 92-93). Cascoriadis shares Finley's skep-ticism and offers in his seminar talk a summary of the reasons Finley, too, citesfor such skepticism. This added insi.stcnce here that he is not an academicuschoJar" should be retaincd.-Trans. 3. Thi.sis an allwion co Finley, Ancient Sicily, pp. 92--93.-P V.-N. 4. In France, philosophy is taught already at the high-school lcvcl.-Trans. 5. In Ckistlmm the Athmian (p. 189, n. 89), Vidal-Naquct and his coauthorPierre Uv~uc explain their adoption of mia dru.t"'1r:. "We retain here-as theconrcx.t, moreover, demands-the tcx.t of manuscripts A and 0. E. desPlaces ... adopts Apelt's conjecture, nµia. We owe this suggestion to M. H. ;Vot~l

Margueritte (from his course at the 6le des Hautes Erudes, 1952-53)." See P·93 of Ckisthenes the Athenian, where this reading is adopted.-Trans. 6. On ancient and modern conceptions of movement, see also Castoriadis's"Phusis and Autonomy" in WIF, pp. 33..-35.-Trans.

Seminar ofFebruary 26, 1986

1. Following Castoriad.is's classic distinction of directors (dirigeants) vs. exe-cutants (o:lcutann) in bureaucratic-capitalist society, someone in an "executive"position is defined, not as a person fulfiUing a top managerial role, as one saystoday, but as a person carrying out orders formulated by others-and wua.lly byhaving to contravene: those directorial orders, since such orders are formulatedfrom the outside and thus don't benefit from the: exc:cutanc's experience, whichalways goes beyond what that expc:ric:ncc: is defined as being. Sec: PSW1-3.-Trans. 2. I have added, as per Castoriadis's usual practice:, quotation marks around"Soviet." (Milan Kundc:ra has quoted him as saying, "U.S.S.R.: four words, fourlies.") Similarly, in the: second sentence of the present paragraph in the: text Ihave added, to this translation of the transcription, quocation marks around theadjective: "socialist." In light of this discwsion of national accounting proce-dures, it is also to be rc:membc:rc:d that, before: his retirement from the: Organi-zation for Economic Cooperation and Development in 1970, Castoriadis hadbeen promoted director of the Branch of Statistics, National Accounts, andGrowth Srudies.-Trans. 3. French- and English-language translators and commentators give: different,indeed opposite:, titles co this lost work. K.achlc:cn Freeman's Anci//4 to the In-Socratic PhiUJsophen: A Compkk Translation ofthe Fragments in Diels, Fragmentedn- Vonolmztiker (Cambridge:, Mass.: Harv.a.rd University Press, 1948; paperbacked., 1983), p. 127, states that "Gorgias ... wrote: one of the: earliest Handbookson Rhetoric; an essay On Being or On Nature, and a number of model ora-tions .... " The: content of what she: calls here On &ing, and which Castoriadisc:nricles On Not-Being, does indeed concern noc-being. In Jean-Paul Dumont'sLes Prlsocratiques (Paris: Gallimard/PICiade, 1988), p. 102.2, Gorgias's text is listedas On Not-Being, or On Nature (my translation of Dumont's French).-Tra.ns. 4. The: three: principal theses of what Frc:c:man encitlcs On Being or On Na-NI" arc: translated very similarly by her in Anci/1.a to the ln-Somuic Philosophers,p. 128, as follows: "I. Nothing exists. II. If anything exists, it is incomprehensi-ble. III. If it is comprc:hc:nsiblc:, it is incommunicable:. "-Trans. 5. This seems to be: Castoriadis's paniaJ pan.phrased translation of two con-Kcutive fragments from Parmc:nidc:s of Elc:a. I provide: below Kathlc:c:n Free:- Notts 191

man's translation of fragmcncs :z. and 3 from her Anci/1.a 10 tht ln-Socrati(Philosophen, p. 42: 1. Come, I will 1cU you-and you mun acccp1 my word when you have hc:ard it- the Wll}'ll of inquiry which alone~ to be thought: the one that rr 1s, and it is not pos- sible for IT NOT TO H, is the way of crt:d.ibiliry, for it follows Truth; the other, rhar IT IS NOT, and that IT is bound NOT TO H: this I tell you is a path that cannot be ex- plored.; for you could neither recognise thar which IS NOT, nor express it. }, For it is the same thing 10 chink and to be.

Freeman adds a footnote co fragment 3, stating: "Or, reading iattv: 'that whichit is possible to think is identical with that which can Be' (Zeller and Burnet,probably rightly)." A$ rendered into English by me, Ca.storiadis's paraphrasedFrench translation of Parmenidcs' Greek adopts language closer to this "proba-bly right" reading of Zeller and Burnet ch.an to the 6m alternative readingFreeman presents in the tcxt.-Trans.

Sm1inar ofMarch 5, 1986

I. The DiCS translarion, which Ca.storiadis wa.s using, provides referenceshere (p. 49) to Phatdrus 2.65c and Phikbus 16d.-Trans. 2. These appear to be Ca.storiadis's paraphrases from Xcnophancs ofColophon's fragments 16 and 15, as they arc listed in Freeman's Ancilkt lo tht Prt-Socrati( Philo1ophen, p. 22.-Trans. 3. In "The Discovery of the Imagination" (WlF, p. 2.20), Castoriadis refers tothese Zoological T"atist1 as .. Sh"rt Trratist1 on NatMral History (Pa1114 Naturolia),"adding that '"Short Treatises on Psychical History' would in bet be the correcttitlc."-Trans.

S,minar ofMarch 11, 1986

1. The precise location of this quoration from Aristotle is Dt Anima3.3.42.Sa.11-12. In "The Discovery of the Imagination," Cascoriadis offers aslighdy different paraphrased translation of Aristotle, which was translated byme from Castoriadis's French as follows: "Sensations are always true, whereasmost of the products of the imagination arc false" (WIF, p. 224; sec also p. 226for a partial direct quotation). There he gives a broader citation of Dt Anima a.s428a5-16; more narrowly, it's cited a.s 42.Sau-11 on p. 22.6.-Trans. 2. Ensidic and msidiubk arc neologisms introduced by Castoriadis to desig-nate the "enscmblistic-idcntitary" dimcnsion.-P. V. fu I noted in "On tht=Translation" in WIF (p. xx.iv): "The term 'cnscmblistic-idcmitarian' ... has beendcvdopcd by Castoriadis in Th, Imaginary lmtitution "fS"citty and in CrrmroadJin thr labyrinth to designate the world of logical, ordered relations. To give anidea of whac he is driving at, we may note chat another rranslarion of msnnbiisu(from r,unnbk, 'set') would ix 'set-cheorccical'-th.ac is, relating to set theory (/athlorir dn msnnbks), but the 'sec-theoretical/ idcntitary' of the CroJSrud.s trans-lation seems to me to be coo heavy a phrase." S«, more recently, the many ref-erences to "ensemblistic-identitary" found in the indexes to WIF and CR.-Trans. 3. Castoriadis quotes this thirty-third "Proverb of Hell" from Blake's ThrM11rriagr of Hr11vm 11nd Hr/l on p. 373 of WIF, at the end of "The OncologicalImport of the History of Science," and in n. 44 (p. 437) to that c~y. <fa.red De·ccmber 9, 1985-i.c., just three months prior co chc present seminar. In thatnote, he thanked Cliff Berry for having found this citation and, subsidiarily andtoo kindly, myself for simply having communicated to him Berry's discovery ofthe exact reference.-Trans. 4. What Aristotle spcci6cally says is, Mrtaboli tu ptzs11 phwri rltst11rilton ("Now, every change is by nature undoing" [Physics 4.13.222b16]). But change is intimately cied up with time, and Aristotle spcab in 221b2 of destructive cime, in effect, by employing the terms phthorll.S (destruct.ion, decay} and a:i.slisi {co remove, to displace}. 5. Sec Thomas Cole's excellent book, Dnnocritw 11nd thr Sources ofGrrrlt An- thropology (1967), Monograph series/ American Philological Association, no. 25 (Atlanta, Ga.: Scholars Press, 1990). 6. Jean-Paul Dumont, Lrs Prlsocratiqun (Paris: Gallimard/Pl~iadc, 1988); partial reissue, Us Ecoks prlsocratiqurs (Paris: Gallimard/Folio, 1991), pp. 496----n-P.V 7. Sec Cornelius Castoriadis, ..Anchropogonie chcz Eschylc ct autocrbtion de l'homme chcz Sophoclc," in Figures du pms11blr.-P.V. This essay on ..An- thropogony in Aeschylus and the Self-Creation of Man in Sophocles" is forth-coming in one of the Stanford University Press volumes of English translationsof Figum.-Trans. 8. ProtagoTllJ 32od-322d.-P.V.

Srminar ofMarch 26, 1986

1. One can add to this the beginning of the Tim11rus and the Crito (the mythof Arlancis).-P. V.-N. [Pierre Vidal-Naquct has himself commented, uponmany occasions, that Plato's myth of the cave, with its projections of shadowson che cave's wall, is itself an anticipation of che projection technique of cin-cm.a.-Trans.) 2. Probably an aJlusion to the English nursery rhyme "Humpty-Dumpty."-,P. V.-N. No~s 193

5,minar ofApril 30, 1986

J. This is again an allusion to Finley, Ancient Sicily, pp. 92.-93.-P. V.-N. 2.. This is, in addition, the kernel of every critique of totalitarianism. For, thetotalitarian ucopia is that. I have spoken to you about it. With the closcd-circui1194 Nous

television surveillance of George l lrwcll's Nin~tun Eighty-Four and other fan-

tasms of this rype chat have been expressed., whether in literature or in reality.The tou.1 imcrnaJization by each citiun of the ideals of the totaJicarian Scace ul-timately means chat each becomes-and there arc inccrprccacions from Jean-Jacques Rousseau through Hannah Arendt chat head in this direction-his ownsurveillant and his own informer in relation to ... the general will, in relationto chc Stace, in relation to chc Parry, in relation to whatever you wane; here youhave an x you can fill in to your own liking. In these observations from theStatesman arc found, then, chc kernel of the criticism of every toulicarian regimeand even of all bureaucratic power, including management of labor in factories,regulations, foremen, and so forth. 3. Herc I've translated the one appearance of "le politique" as boch po/itiltos(the original Greek term for 1utusman) and as "the politicat in general, so as tofit wich the dual meaning of this French term, as I believe it is inrended here.-Trans. 4. On musical composition, see, e.g., "The ~ial-Historica.l: Mode of Being,Problems of Knowledge," PPA, pp. 44-45, and .. From the Monad to Auton-omy," WIF, pp. 181-83.-Traru. 5. "Modern Capitalism and Revolution," PSW:z, pp. 12.6-315.-Trans. 6. The Socialist-Communist alliance had just been defc:ued in the March 16,1986 legislative elections. French President Fran~is Mitterrand, a Socialist, was 1

forced into a "cohabitation" (divided government) arrangement wich the neo-

Gaullist leader and Paris mayor Jacques Chirac, who became his new primeminister. Thus, Chir:tc as well as the outgoing prime minister, Laurent Fabius, aSocialist, had just been doing the rounds of the television news shows, includingL'Heu" J,, vlriti (The Hour of Truth), which Cascoriadis mentions here in theFrench original.-Tr:tns. 7. The Situationist International leader Guy Debord, author in 1967 of TheSociety of the Specta.ck, trans. from the French (Detroit: Black and Red, 1983),was bricAy a member of Castoriadis's revolutionary organiz.ation, Socialisme ouBarbarie. For a former S. ou B. member's close-up view of Debord's year-longpassage through S. ou B., see Daniel Blanchard (known as Canjuers in thegroup), "Debord in the Resounding Cataract ofTime," trans. Helen Arnold, inR.tvo/utionary Romanticirm: A Drunken Boat An.thology, ed. Max Blechman (SanFrancisco: City Lights, 1999), pp. 113-37; for a historian's analytical view, seeStephen Hastings-King," L'lntemationak Si"'4tionnisu, Socia/iJmr ou Ba,barie,and che Crisis of the Marxisc Imaginary,·· SubStana: A Rrvinu ofTheo,y and Lit-erary Criticism 90 (1999): 16-54; for the view of a Situationist 'zinc also sympa-thetic to Castoriadis and S. ou B., se<: Bill Brown, "Strangers in the Night .... "Not Bored.' 31 Oune 1999): 74-83 <hctp:/lwww.notbored.org/strangers.html>.-Trans. Notts 195

8. Michd Rocard, who had quit Fabiw's cabinet in a staged protest the yearbcfoR' (1985), was later appointed prime minister by Mitterrand during the lat-ter's second prcsidcntiaJ term in office. Such resignations arc a common practicefor pmidmtiabks, potcmia1 presidcnria1 candidates, as has occurred again re-cently with the departure of the huzrqw Jean-Pierre ChcvCncmem, who has re-signed from SociaJist governments in 1983, 1990, and 2.000.-Trans. 9, For Castoriadis's views on the "New Philosophers," sec "The Divcrsion-ists" (1977), in PSWJ, pp. 2.72.-77, and "L'lndustrie du vide" (his response ro"New Philosopher" Bernard-Henri Uvy), Nuuw/ Oburvatrur 765 Uuly 9-15,1979): 35-37. The latter text was reprinted in Q"41Umi di storia II Oanuary1980): 322-29, aJong with the June 18 and 25, 1979, Nouw/ Ob1"1J1Jtrur letters ofPierre VidaJ-Naquct (ibid.: 315-17, 319-21) and the June 18, 1979, Nouvr/ Obur-vate-ur letter of Uvy (ibid.: 317-19). A second reprint of Castoriadis's text aloneappeared in his Dom4;nes dr l'hommr: Us canyfoun du labyn'nthr II (Paris: Seu ii,1986), pp. 28-34.-Trans.

Translatori Afterword 1. Quoted in Lefort, Writing, p. 188. 2. "The Destinies ofTotalitarianism" (1981), Salmagundi 60 (Spring-Summer 1983): 107-22, correcting a grammatical error and, in light of the French trans-lation, what appears to be a typo (p. 107). 3. Compare his remarks on Plato and the Parthenon on April 30, 1986, m CR, p. 348, on posuevolutionary Greek, French, and American democratic crc-ativiry: ..tragedy and the Parthenon," "Stendhal, Balzac, Rimbaud, Manet, andProust," and "Poe, Melville, Whitman, and Faulkner." 4. Sec my essay "Castoriadis on Culture" <http://www.costis.org/x/castori-adis/culturc.htm>. 5. Sec, however, n. 5 of "On the Translation," this volume, and CS/, men-tioned below. 6. Similarities appear even in tiny details, e.g., his paraphrasing of Hcgc:Iabout the freedom of one, a few, and aJI (SAS, p. 322, and April 30). 7. The most convincing evidence, though, is the final seminar's added noteabout the St4trsman containing "the kernel of the criticism of cvc:ry tota1itarianregime and even of all bureaucratic power, including management of labor infactories, ,egulations, foremen, and so forth." 8. The most cgregiow, swtaincd example is Philippe Gomaux's Bourdieu-inspircd sociology thesis, "Soru,/W,W ou &rbarir": Un mgagrmmt po/itiqig rt in-tr/kctw/ "4ns '4 Fr11na dr /llp1'rs-prrrr (Lausanne: l:.d.itions Payor Lausanne,1997). 9. Although Plato Wil.S developing a deeply antidemocratic argument, he re- Nous

mainro profoundly Greek. Ten chousand in Greek is murias, and murios means"countless." We know from the last chapter of Cki1thmt1 tht AthmUl'n----Vidal-Naquec and Uvequc's classic work, much admired by Castoriadis, on the birthof democn.cy-that Plato dl!Vdopcd his negation of the Athenian democracy byborrowing therefrom, and especially from its numerical features-three, five,ten, and rhcir multipla being privil~d Clcisthenic numerals. (My English-lan-guage translation, Ckisthnm tht AthmU,n, includes as an appendix 0,, tht ln-vmtion of Dmrocr4q, the proceedings of a 1991 conference in Paris withLeveque, Vidal-Naquec, and Ca.uoriadis that was organized by myself a.nd ClaraGibson Maxwell along with PascaJ Vernay and StCphane Barbcry and chaired byformer S. ou B. member Christian Descamps; this minicolloquium wa.s held tocelebrate and critically examine the 2,5ooth anniversary ofCleisthcnes' reforms.It was Castoriadis himself in 1991 who 6rst recommended chat I take a look atClisthfnt l'Athlnirn in preparation for chis anniversary.) Even Plato didn't de-scribe the crowd of citizens here as "myriad." Rather, it is in relation co the dis-turbing unendingncss of not-being that the term ..ten thousand," meaning "in-nnmerable, n appears: "Ten thousand times ten thousand, being is not andnoc-being is,n as Castoriadis quotes SophMt 259b. 10. In CS/I, p. 142, contemporary denials of the possibilicy of "real democ-racy" were also linked to Plato's Protagoras, a dialogue mentioned several timesin the 1986 ~minars too. 11. Appropriating S. ou B. 's distinctive red and white cover, Autogtstion et So-cia/imu, for example, became an inAuenciaJ journal in the 1970s. 12. Castoriadis took pride in the fa.a that his reaching post resulted nor froma state "appointment" bur from election by fellow EHESS members. 13. Auocher volume of transcribed Casroriadis seminars is now forthcomingfrom l:.d.irions du Seu.ii under the general series heading La Crlation hurnaint.The April 29, 1987, seminar from this volume had already appeared as "LaVCritC dans l'effectivitC social-historique" in a special issue of Us Tnnps Mod-trrw (609 Uunc-July-Augwr 2000}: 41-70) devoted to Castoriadis. 14. Sec app. E/19910, PSW3, p. 346. Agora lnternational-27, rue Froidcv:aux75io4 Paris FRANCE; <Curtis@msh-paris.fr>-has now ceased photocopy dis-triburion of these transcriptions. 15. Sec, e.g., April 30, n. 9 on the "New Philosophers." 16. The name he cited, seemingly out of the blue, was GiUcs Deleuz.c's. Onlylater did I form the hypothesis that Castoriadis may have felt that Dcleuz.e/Gu.acu.ri's book on capitalism and schizophrenia may have taken over, withoutanribucion or the same depth of revolutionary purpose, his own ideas on the~nm1.d.iccory narure of capitalism, which simulrancowJy ac/wks workers' par-ucipation and solidtJ it. 17. Six month.s before his death, Castoriadis spoke on the theme of mwical Nota 19~

improvisarion at a La Villcnc (Paris) colloquium organized by the jazz musician